


A Wayfare of Wolves

by Dr_Doomsduck



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, I write Fix-Its not tragedies, If you are a Dany fan then darling this fic is not for you, Let's see if we can't give Jon his personality back, Post-Canon, Work In Progress, post-season 8
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-03-13 07:47:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 46,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18936547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Doomsduck/pseuds/Dr_Doomsduck
Summary: The king is missing. The capital is under attack by a bloodthirsty cult. Dorne is on the verge of rebellion. The Westerlands have been sacked by the Iron islands. The Stormlands are groaning under the weight of the refugees while the North is facing a new threat from beyond the wall. And there, amidst it all, at the heart of the chaos, Jon Snow is lurched back into existence after being stabbed by Ser Alliser Thorne and his men.





	1. Epilogue

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who couldn't stand certain parts of the Series finale?! Guess who felt the need to fix the grievous errors D&D made with Jon Snow in the last episode?! Guess who's going to do that in the most complex and unlikely way possible?!
> 
> Yep.
> 
> It's me.
> 
> Welcome back, boys and girls, I thought I was done after a Royal Fawn, but shit, I am definitely not. See, my entire hope to salvage Jon's character in the final season hinged on Political!Jon, but obviously, we're just supposed to think that Jonathan Snowflake is a complete moron who now condones mass murder. So here's what we're going to do instead: We are going to bring back a Jon we do like and we're going to let him figure all this shit out!
> 
> Please bear in mind that this fic is not finished, not written yet and not even completely planned out like A Royal Fawn was. This is just me responding to the utter fuck-up in the final season and therefore updates may not be completely consistent and they probably won't be twice a week either because that was bloody exhausting. Furthermore, I will probably be adding characters, warnings and relationships as I go along.
> 
> There, now that we've got that out of the way: Enjoy!

Kinvara is one hundred and twenty-nine years old. She has seen the turn of the century and has watched seasons change over and over again. She has been on the shores of both Essos and Westeros. She has met slaves and queens and dragons in her lifetime. Each more important than the last.

But tonight?

Tonight she is looking for something that surpasses all of their significance.

There’s a king, hiding deep down in the undercroft of this godforsaken temple of greed and pride. One that she intends to hunt down and sacrifice for the good that her lord has dictated to her. It doesn’t take much. No lavish altars. No large statues. No glass-stained windows like the arrogant false gods of this continent demand.

All it takes is a stone.

Mined from the ruins of Stygai. Mounted into a golden necklace and worn by her remarkable sister until the very end.

Melisandre of Asshai had brought forth the Lord’s miracles in her time. She had brought men back to life. Had predicted the princess that was promised. Had lit the fire that held back the Great Other himself.

She was a hero.

She’d been a tool of R’hllor, speaking and acting in his name with a certainty Kinvara could only dream of.

But the stone in her hand is proof that she too has a purpose. That she too is meant to bring forth greatness. It feels warm on her palm, despite the fact that it must’ve spend months, if not years, in the inhospitable nights of the north.

There is magic in it. Has to be. Kinvara can feel it from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet as they carry her down the many, many steps of this dungeon.

“Īlon'll arghugon zirȳ ilagon se īlon'll zālagon zirȳ syt īlva āeksio!” A member of the Fiery Hand comes running up the spiralling staircase.

“Maghagon zirȳ lenton, lēkia.” She smiles at him. They’ll all return to their rightful home. Away from this hell they’ve been forced to endure.

She would go with him, to school the infidels, to cleanse them of their sins, but as much as she might like to, it’s Kinvara’s destiny to descend into the darkness. To bring light in the blackest crevice of the earth.

More soldiers pass her by, and the steps of the staircase turn red with the blood of their enemies long before she lays eyes on their physical remains.

Mangled, sad piles of humanity. Or no. There’s nothing of the men left. They have shed their mortal coil and have moved on to a better place.

Or perhaps they haven’t. But if not, Kinvara scarcely pities them. They made their bed, now they shall lie in it.

She has more pressing matters to attend to. The chaos around her shall scarcely touch her. Not even the smoke filling the hallways is much of a bother to her. Nor the sound of clashing swords in the distance. Those men in their gold armors will never defeat the chosen of Rh’llor.

And if they do? Well, then those exalted members of the Fiery Hand shall have died for a greater purpose.

They all will have.

It does not matter how many lives it will take, so long as she finds the king.

Down here, the air is stale and the keep still shows the scars and memories of its cleansing. Tunnels have collapsed, there are heaps of bricks and chunks of walls simply lying around. These heathens had not taken the time to remove them.

They never reflected on the gift they'd been given. Instead, those roaches had simply wiped of the dust and continued living in their own filth.

But no more.

She will put an end to it. Tonight. Kinvara is sure of it. All she needs is the king.

“konīr iksā.” She murmurs, once she’s reached the bottom of the steps and she can see her goal, quietly waiting for her in the dim lights of the torches.

It doesn’t feel like she’s walking forward. It feels like she’s floating.

This is why she crossed the narrow sea. This is why her Lord gave her the very long life she’s left behind. Her purpose. Her everything.

It is here.

She lets the tip of her fingers slowly trace a path over the rugged, stone-like tooth. One of the ones that still remain.

This was a skull. Once embedded in the greatest dragon to ever have lived. _Balerion, the Black Dread._ The _King_ amongst his kind. The _Dragon_ Kinvara was sent to bring back to them.

The vermin of King’s Landing may have escaped annihilation the first time. They will not do so again. Drogon was young when he first spread his wings over the city. A child of the Lord of Light, sure, but only a child.

Balerion will finish what he started.

Will get it right this time.

They will all shudder before the eldest son of the Red God.

Kinvara smiles, and places her sister’s stone in the mouth of the beast. It doesn’t take much, this ritual. One only needs to know the right words and show proper care for the body.

Not that there is much of a body to speak of in this case. Just an ancient piece of bone. Thankfully, there are other ways to create the same effect.

Ointment from the Valyrian Freehold. As flammable and as volatile as the Doom itself was. She uncorks the expensive flask that holds it, and carefully drips it on the dust-ridden cold floor of the undercroft.

A circle. An altar. No, better than that. A temple of flames.

“Zȳhys ōñoso jehikagon Āeksiot epi, se gīs hen sȳndrorro jemagon.” She starts, voice steady and certain.

The second step; A sacrifice. Now, if she were to bring back a mere mortal, a simple shell of a living being, this wouldn’t be necessary. Sure, there might be some…deficits in the long run, but nothing so dire a human wouldn’t be able to live with.

A dragon, though. A dragon grows old and mighty. It needs _more._

It needs blood.

She reaches for the knife strapped to her belt.

Now this? This was hard come by. Harder than the necklace even. It required seven faceless men to merely pilfer it off its original owner. Seven men. None of them able to kill their intended target. Only one came back at all. But he came with the object in hand, so all is forgiven.

_Valar Morghulis._

_Valar Dohaeris._

But this was the blade that struck down the Great Other. This was the triumph of life over death. This is what she needs.

She lays her left hand on what remains of the creature’s nose and swallows.

It will not be easy.

It never has been.

Kinvara closes her eyes and counts to ten.

And before her mind has finished counting the final number, she swiftly brings down the knife in her left hand.

There’s a scream. Feels like it might come from someone else. Not from her. Because doesn’t really hurt. Not yet. That is what comes after.

Three fingers tumble down from the skull’s surface and onto the floor. She takes what remains of her hand away from it. And then forces herself to open her eyes.

The bloodstain is large. Larger than she might’ve anticipated. It looks somewhat like a hand, smudged and uneven, with only the thumb and the little finger remaining.

But it is blood.

She nods. Refuses to look at the fingers on the ground or the hand that is now hardly a hand.

That’s the second part of the ritual fulfilled.

“Īlon epagon se Āeksiot Ōño naejot rhaenagon iā perzys, se laesdaor īlva lēda se ōños hen vēzos emi ojūdan.” Her voice is trembling, and there are tears running down her cheeks.

Almost there.

Just a little while further.

Kinvara takes three large steps back and sits down on her knees.

“H-hen sȳndrorro, ōños. Hen ñuqīr, perzys. Hen morghot, glaeson.” No. That’s wrong. She musn’t stumble on the words. She cannot afford it.

“Hen sȳndrorro, ōños. Hen ñuqīr, perzys. Hen morghot, glaeson.” She breathes. There. That’s better.

All she needs to do is repeat it. Over and over again. The Fiery Hand will keep the knights away. They will ensure that she can succeed.

She only has to believe that she will.

“Hen sȳndrorro, ōños. Hen ñuqīr, perzys. Hen morghot, glaeson.”

The circle of ointment combusts without a warning, and the bright light blinds her. Still, she continues. Louder this time. Letting her voice echo through the empty hall around her.

“Hen sȳndrorro, ōños. Hen ñuqīr, perzys. Hen morghot, glaeson!”

The fire grows stronger. The light grows brighter. She can’t see anything still. There is only fire. Fire and Blood.

 _“Hen sȳndrorro, ōños. Hen ñuqīr, perzys._ _Hen morghot, glaeson!_ ”

Kinvara hears a crack. And then the clattering noise of a stone breaking. Her own? Or Melisandre’s? Perhaps both.

They’ve served their purpose after all.

“Hen sȳndrorro, ōños. Hen ñuqīr, perzys. Hen morghot, glaeson…” She mutters, because she is suddenly so tired. Like all her one hundred and twenty-nine years have begun to creep up on her.

The Lord of Light is calling her home.

The ritual has been fulfilled.

But he is not so cruel as to not let her witness the fruits of her labour. The brightness recedes. And even as her hair begins to fall out and her skin begins to dry, Kinvara can blink against a vision again.

The circle of flames has petered out into nothing more than a black ring of soot.

The skull is gone.

There’s smoke everywhere.

But there’s no Godlike Dragon to speak of.

No majestic beast to behold.

All that’s there, sitting in what was once her circle, is a man.

Maybe not even that. He looks so young he might as well be half a boy.

Black hair. Brown eyes. Nothing of note.

“S-skoros?” She croaks, because this can’t be right. When she’d stared into the flames of Meereen’s destruction, she’d seen it. She knows she did.

_A mighty dragon._

_A lost king._

This can’t be right…

“Who are you?” And may the Lord of Light help them all. This _boy_ speaks to her in the common tongue, with a vulgar accent no less.

“Where am I?” He tries again, but Kinvara is not inclined to answer him. And even if she were, she’s not sure that she could. Her throat feels broken and raw. Her muscles ache and all she wishes to do now is sleep.

She did what she had to do.

Now, it’s time for her to return home.

To face R’hllor and be grateful. But how can she be? When her whole life has led up to this. A filthy boy made flesh in the belly of a corrupt and rotten city.

Was she not meant for something greater?

It is this last thought that echoes in her mind over and over again, until her body has failed her completely and her skin starts to peel off, her flesh is withering away and her bones begin to turn to dust.

Kinvara was one hundred and twenty-nine years old. She had seen the turn of the century and had watched seasons change over and over again. She had been on the shores of both Essos and Westeros. She had met slaves and queens and dragons in her lifetime. Each more important than the last.

And tonight, she only summoned a lost bastard from the North and nothing more.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Valyrian translations in this chapter:
> 
> “We'll hunt them down and we'll burn them for our lord.”
> 
> “Bring them home, brother.”
> 
> “There you are.”
> 
> “We ask the Lord to shine his light, and lead a soul out of darkness.”
> 
> “We ask the Lord of Light to start a fire, and blind us with the light of the sun we have lost”
> 
> “From darkness, light. From ashes, fire. From death, life.”
> 
> “W-what?”


	2. A Bastard Boy

The first thing he becomes aware of are his knees hitting the hard, stone floor. He's heaving like his lungs have long been starved for a breath of fresh air and shivering like they threw him out beyond the Wall in nothing but his breeches.

Slowly, without moving or straining, Jon tries to make sense of it all.

Thorne.

The men.

Olly.

The knives.

They'd...

They've...

He shouldn't be here. He can't be here. Not unless ‘here’ is one of the Seven Hells he’s always dreaded. Which, sure, it might very well be, given the stench.

A groan escapes him. Everything seems to hurt. Everything but the seven knife-wounds he got last night.

But he has to breathe. He _has_ to get up before they realize he's...

What is he anyway?

Alive?

Just not dead yet?

_Oh Gods, I'm not a wight, am I? Please tell me I'm not a...__

Jon gags.

No. He's not. He's still himself. He can feel it. He is still the master of his own body, whatever it might be now. And because of that. Because he is still himself, Jon decides to open his eyes and face whatever world he's arrived into.

The first thing he sees is soot. There seems to be soot everywhere. On his hands, on the floor, up against the wall, covering the debris around him. It even seems to be crawling up his throat alongside the smoke that's clouding up this dark and inhospitable place.

But then, there! A shape in the shadows.

Human. Female.

"Who are you?" He rasps.

There's no response, but the grey wasps of smoke seem to shift as if willed by an unearthly force, giving Jon a clear view of the woman up ahead.

 _Melisandre?_ his mind provides at first. It isn't her, though. The shape of the face is wrong, the hair is too dark.

A red priestess? Sure.

Just not the red priestess he knows.

"Where are we?" He asks, and then decides that perhaps it's for the best that the woman isn't Melisandre after all.

Mostly because whoever she is, she's clearly not going to last much longer. Her hair seems to be falling off. She's missing several fingers on her left hand, the blood of it slowly dripping downwards. But that's not what's going to kill her. No, that particular honour will probably go to the grievous wound that is marring her throat.

There's more blood and seared meat around the deep, ragged cuts that run from her jawline down towards her breasts. In-between are mangled, twisted pieces of metal and razor-sharp flints.

Her eyes are wide with fear. Or maybe disbelief. It’s hard to tell at this point.

“Are you alright?” He tries to stumble to his feet. Only realizing then and there that he’s completely and utterly naked.

The priestess doesn’t answer his question. Nor does she look at him. Doesn’t react to what he’s doing in the slightest. Her gaze seems to stare at a sight that’s a thousand miles away from them.

_She’s already gone._

Still, he can’t stop himself from reaching out. From trying… _something_ at least _._ However, the moment his hand touches her shoulder, things go from bad to worse. Like a clot of earth, the woman’s shoulder falls apart in his grip. He watches as the layers of her body begin to disappear in front of him. The skin, the eyes, the muscles, the bones. Jon can see them come apart one by one, until there’s nothing left. Until her empty robe falls to the floor with a heavy clank.

“Gods…” He mutters, still trying to make his mind believe what his eyes just saw.

He’s seen so many strange things in his life; first at Castle Black and then far beyond the Wall, but this? This is…He can grasp at men coming back from the dead. At prophecies and at Old Gods. At giants and at direwolves.

What he just witnessed, though, was none of that.

The only thing he can think to compare it to is a white walker, violently exploding into shards of ice the moment he hit it with Longclaw. But even that…it doesn’t…

Jon breathes. In and out. In and out again.

He doesn’t even know where he is. For all he knows this could just be what entering the Seven Hells looks like.

Slowly, without much coordination, he slouches down to touch the robe. It’s all that’s left of her and for now, it feels like the only thing that is even slightly _real_ is this dark, smoke-filled cavern.

His hand glides over the fabric, soft silk and carefully made embroideries. It easily gives way, so much so, that Jon momentarily forgets there’s more to it than that.

His carelessness is punished immediately.

A sharp edge skitters past the palm of his hand, leaving behind a painful, red line of blood.

Jon hisses, and lifts the cloth to see what it is he’s come across. Unsurprisingly, he finds a knife. But not like any knife he’s seen before. It’s decadent. Gold and rubies and a handle of something he’d almost call iron, but not quite. Perhaps it’s bone. Perhaps not. The blade, though, he can recognize instantly. Valyrian steel. Just like Longclaw.

Which, he’s got no idea where his sword currently is. But it’s good that he’s found himself some sort of weapon at least, because there’s a noise coming from up above.

An echo of footsteps. A quick tap-tap-tap that seems to be moving towards him. Before long, there’s even a light at the far-left corner of the cavern. And without meaning to, Jon already picks up the knife and holds it out.

Whatever happens next, whatever he’s going to have to face, at least he won’t be unarmed in doing so.

The light of a torch becomes bright enough to cast shadows on the wall, and he can already hear the tell-tale noise of a man walking in armour.

He tightens his grip around the blade.

Perhaps he should’ve hidden himself, or stayed out of sight. That might’ve been clever, but it’s too little, too late now.

The shadows become a solid shape turning the corner and there, only a few feet away from Jon, stands a knight.

He’s not currently wearing a helmet, which reveals his face to be that of a young man with dark hair. The rest of his armour, though, tells a tale all of its own.

_Gold._

The pauldrons, the cuirass, the gauntlets and the greaves. They’re all gilded. And Jon has only ever seen such an armour once before in his life.

_Kingsguard._

Within the blink of an eye Jon tries to remember who it is they’ve got sitting on the throne nowadays. It’s not Joffrey, thank the Gods. Must be…Tommen, then? A boy he’s laid eyes upon at Winterfell, but knows nothing about. Well, except from the fact that he’s firmly kept between the claws and teeth of Cersei Lannister, and that alone gives Jon enough reason to keep his new dagger aimed at the man. Even when the knight in question doesn’t draw his own weapon, but merely comes closer to shine the torch at Jon’s face.

When he does, though, the reaction is not what Jon might’ve imagined it to be.

“What the…” His eyes grow wide.

Jon gulps in another breath. Knife still shakily held up at the man.

“What is it, Podrick? What did you find?!” A woman’s voice comes from above. She must be heading this way too.

“Well, my Lady Commander, it seems to be the…Lord Commander…?”

He knows him. The knight knows Jon simply by looking at him. There’s no armour, no sword, no decoration of any kind to suggest that Jon _is_ in fact the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, but this young man knows him to be just that.

So, they must’ve met at some point. At Castle Black. Jon tries to wrack his brain trying to remember when. He must be one of Stannis’s men. Someone who survived the attack on the Boltons then? Or maybe not, because how does one go from being a soldier in the North to being a Kingsguard here in a matter of days? Plus, last Jon had seen, Stannis and Cersei weren’t exactly on great terms with one another.

A second knight comes pacing down into the darkness.

“Have you hit your head or someth-” It’s the same voice as before. Belonging to a woman. A very _large_ woman.

She takes one look at Jon and her expression immediately mirrors that of her fellow-knight.

“Oh my word. -” She breathes. “- Lord Snow, what in the name of the Seven are you doing here?”

She knows his name.

How can she know his name?

Because he might not remember meeting the _other_ knight, but he would surely remember meeting this one.

“I…I…Who are you?” His dagger wavers. Whoever these people are, they don’t seem to want to hurt him. Not yet, anyway.

“You don’t remember?” She hands the torch to her companion and starts taking off her cloak.

“Would I ask you if I did?” Jon splutters.

She raises an eyebrow, but even so, drapes her cloak around him in an attempt to help him cover up.

“Thank you.” He amends.

 “Right, well, let’s just try and find out what exactly happened here.” Her voice is stern, but not unkind. It reminds him of the way old nan used to treat him, back at Winterfell.

“Magic.” Her companion, Podrick, calls out from behind them.

He’s crouched at one of the large pieces of debris Jon had seen lying around before. There’s a tiny piece of a stone held between his fingers, and when he lifts it up into the light, Jon can see a shimmer of red reflected from it.

“This was one of their spells or rituals or something. Just like we saw last month. -” He holds the stone up at his nose and makes a face. “- yep. Definitely magic.”

“To what end?” Jon asks, but he doesn’t disagree; what’s happened to him certainly wasn’t normal.

“Well, whatever it was, it destroyed poor old Balerion over here in the process.” Ser Podrick kicks against a large tooth lying on the floor.

“We caught one of the zealots upstairs. He kept talking about bringing back a _king_ and a _dragon_.” The Lady Commander mutters.

“Guess it’s a good thing they failed at that, then.” Jon looks at the remnants of the skull and tries for a wry smile.

“I’m not entirely sure that they did.” She replies, giving him an odd look.

“Lady Commander, perhaps we’re better off trying to face this particular crisis in the light of day, rather than in the dust of the basement?” Ser Podrick asks, staring at the mess on the floor.

“Right you are. Come on, Lord Snow, let’s see if we can’t find you something to wear.” She answers, but Jon doesn’t miss the glances shared between her and the knight.

He also notes that after they’ve led him up two staircases or so, Ser Podrick takes a left while the Lady Commander and Jon have to keep climbing.

A plan has been set in motion.

Jon’s just not sure _what_ kind of plan it is.

Still, the Lady Commander has made no move to take his dagger from him, doesn’t seem intimidated by him (though, given her stature, Jon’s not surprised) and it’s almost as if it hasn’t occurred to her that he might be a threat.

But perhaps it’s just that Jon can’t be a bigger threat than what she’s already facing, because on their climb upwards, he spots the remains of what seems like a battle. There are corpses laid about the steps of the staircases, blood and soot line the walls and the stones itself don’t seem to be in a great condition either.

“Where are we?” Jon asks, hoping that the Lady Commander will be more forthcoming than the red priestess was.

“Where do you think we are?” She stops and turns around in the middle of the staircase, before glancing down at her own armour.

“The Red Keep?” He replies, because well, where else are you going to find the Kingsguard?

“Got it in one.” She smiles, and returns to climbing the steps.

It takes a while, but eventually they reach the part of the keep that overlooks King’s Landing. The warm sunlight on his face feels rare and wonderful. It’s been so long since he’s experienced anything like it that he almost refrains from walking further. However, once his eyes have gotten used to the brightness, he begins to see that something here is terribly awry.

Now, Jon’s never been to King’s Landing, but he’s seen cities before, and he knows that they generally don’t have gaping black stretches of nothing sitting in the middle of them.

“What happened here?”

“That’s rather a long story. Why don’t you just tell me what you _do_ remember, and we’ll fill in the blanks from there.” The Lady commander comes to walk next to him, rather than in front of him.

Jon glances at her. Of course, he _could_ go over everything that’s happened, but if he does, there’s no telling what she’ll do with that information. Moreover, if they really are in the Red Keep, chances are that Cersei will hear about what he tells her either way.

On the other hand, in order to _gain_ knowledge, it seems he has to _give_ the Commander something in return.

“I was serving at Castle Black.” He blurts out eventually, because she knows he’s the Lord Commander, so that’s hardly going to be a risky thing to say.

Sure enough, he receives a nod.

“Stannis and his army came to join us there.” Again, it can’t have escaped the Capital’s notice that one of the largest armies in the Seven Kingdoms has moved North.

“I was aware of that, yes.” The commander replies.

“He was killed by Ramsay Bolton.” If they haven’t heard it yet, A raven will come to inform them of it soon.

“Hm. I don’t think he was.” She muses.

“I’m quite sure he’s dead.” Jon swallows.

“I’ll agree with you on that.” There’s a strange expression on the Lady Commander’s face. As if she’s both proud and solemn at the same time.

And then of course, there’s the big one. The most important bit of knowledge he can’t ever forget and well, if he truly is in King’s Landing, he might as well use the opportunity to let his voice get heard.

“And I remember the dead rising. -” He breathes, carefully assessing the Lady Commander’s reaction. “- I remember them coming back from death itself at the command of the White Walkers.”

The faces of Hardhome are back with him all at once. The people there. Karsi. The children. The blue eyes. Those accursed blue eyes everywhere.

“Lord Snow. Please calm down.” She tells him.

But he cannot calm down. Will not calm down. It’s as if the floodgates have opened up all at once. Someone has to listen. Someone _must_ listen.

“Their leader…I’ve seen him kill by the hundreds and raise by the thousands!”

“Lord Snow _._ ” The commander repeats.

“If he makes it past the wall, everyone in the seven kingdoms will perish! We’ll all be shambling corpses. The men, the women, the children! -” He heaves.

“Lord Snow, Please-”

“- You don’t understand! I know how insane this sounds, I know you don’t believe me! I do, I truly do, but…”

“ _Jon!_ ” She snaps.

It’s enough to drive the visions of the dead from his mind once more.

“I believe you.-” There’s a softness to her voice all of the sudden, and her eyes are earnest. As if she truly does mean what she says. “- I do believe you. But I also believe that you do not know where you are right now. Not really anyway. Furthermore, I believe that matters are far more complex than I first thought them to be. And I believe that the only way we’re going to be able to sort things out is by staying calm.”

She puts a hand on his shoulder. It’s comforting. More so than perhaps it ought to be, but someone in the South believes his words to be true. Someone who isn’t just looking to be praised as a saviour. Someone who hasn’t come to claim the North by conquest.

“Thank you.” He whispers, closing his eyes.

“Come along, now. Let’s get you a pair of pants first. We can save the realm after, agreed?” She gives him a sad smile.

“Yeah. Yes. Wouldn’t do to try and save the world without some breeches, I suppose.” Jon huffs.

She leads him onward and it feels as if his steps are just a little lighter. Like a bit of the weight has fallen from his shoulders. He can breathe easier here, and it has nothing to do with the sunlight or the lavishly decorated chambers of the Red Keep.


	3. A Long Story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's chapter three! I'm posting this one today and then chapter four tomorrow, mostly because they sort of belong together and I feel like they should be read that way, but I've already finished this one and I haven't finished four, so you know, enjoy this one now, come back tomorrow for the other half!

His shirt itches. Which, it’s undoubtedly a very excellent shirt that looks as if it’s made from the most expensive white threads the Realm has to offer, but Jon still thinks it itches. There’s this little spot on the top of his right-flank where the seams are scratching against his skin over and over again. It’s driving him absolutely mad.

So, really, it’s not his fault that he keeps trying to lift the thing up to reach that particular spot. Mostly because scratching it with the fabric still between his fingers and his skin just _doesn’t do the trick._

However, it’s also because it’s weird how he got stabbed seven times last night and there’s _no_ evidence of that on his chest whatsoever. He’s constantly wondering if perhaps the next time he looks at his stomach, there will be blood and wounds and the what have you’s of an ordinary murder.

There never is.

At least the pants are a good fit. He should probably be glad for that.

“Are you going to keep doing that?” The Lady Commander asks, but how she knows that he is doing that is beyond him, because she’s still staring out the window with her back towards him.

“Sorry.” Jon mutters.

“Please, don’t apologize on my account. I’m just wondering if you’re going to be scratching yourself like that when the Hand of the King gets here.” She shrugs.

“And who would that be, then?”

“You’ll see.”

 And that’s the end of that.

Again.

Jon’s been trying to pilfer some more information out of her, but so far, she’s been as yielding as the 300-mile-long wall he serves at. The only thing she’s been willing to divulge is that the situation is too complex for her to explain and that he should hear it from someone he knows.

And that someone is the Hand of the King. Apparently.

Jon sighs.

His hand is hurting. The cut on his palm isn’t particularly deep, but it _is_ still bleeding. He’s not sure if the Lady Commander and Ser Podrick have even noticed, given that he’s scarcely let go of the dagger. The handle feels as if it’s drenched in blood by now, but no-one’s asked him about it, and he’s not going to volunteer to put it down until he’s figured out in how much danger he truly is or isn’t.

There’s another itch somewhere on his back. He tries to reach it, but it’s just at a spot he can’t seem to get to. Perhaps he could ask the Lady Commander. But…

Well, that’s just uncouth several times over. First, she probably outranks him in ten different ways. Second, she’s a lady. Third, they’ve both sworn an oath of celibacy.

Not that he was planning anything. Still, he shouldn’t ask.

That itch, though.

Thankfully, there’s a creaking noise coming from the door, indicating that Jon’s struggle is rendered moot either way. Immediately, his eyes are fixed on the solar’s entrance. There’s a flip of his stomach. He’s met powerful men in his life. Had seen the old King Robert. Had met Stannis the would-be King. Had argued with Mance, A king, even if that was just beyond the Wall. Still, it isn’t quite the same as standing in the Red Keep and waiting for one of the most powerful men in Westeros to cast judgement upon him.

The first one to enter is Ser Podrick. In his hands are several rolls of linen, and when he sees Jon he nods and smiles, before joining the Lady Commander in the corner.

Next up is a man Jon would probably recognize anywhere. Because of his short stature, sure, but there’s more to it. It’s in the way he carries himself. Regal. Dangerous. Like a lion. The beard and the scars are new, but this is undoubtedly Tyrion Lannister. The imp himself.

He looks less enthusiastic by Jon’s presence. His eyes are wide and he’s tapping his fingers on his tunic over and over again.

Behind him is a dark-skinned man Jon has never seen, but one who looks a lot like Melisandre and the woman in the dungeons. He has red flames drawn into the skin of his face and looks decidedly unimpressed by Jon.

Last to enter the Solar is a familiar face, a truly familiar face, at last.

“Seven hells!” Ser Davos blurts out when he sees him, and Jon can’t stop himself from smiling either.

_Finally._

It feels steadying, to have someone here who _knows_ him, who understands the situation beyond the Wall. And so, even though they’re barely more than acquaintances, Jon happily accepts the bearhug Davos offers, dropping the blooded knife in the process.

“What are you doing all the way out here, you crazy bugger?” He guffaws

“How did you get here so quickly?” Jon asks at the exact same moment.

“Quickly?” Ser Davos’s hand is still on his shoulder, but the man in question is looking at Tyrion and the Lady Commander.

“Yes. Just yesterday we were speaking of marching on Winterfell, because Stannis died and you…you must remember that, right?” He tries.

“What’s going on here?” Davos turns back to him and stares him the eyes, and while Jon might have been able to obscure the truth from the Lady Commander, it’s too much in the face of the Onion Knight’s earnest and worried expression.

“I…I think I died. The men at Castle Black, they betrayed me and -” His fingers unwittingly reach for his stomach. “- they hurt me. Even…even little Olly. I don’t understand. One moment I was there and then I was found by…by…”

He looks towards the Lady Commander.

“Ser Brienne of Tarth.-” She finally reveals. “- If you please.”

Jon nods, before a warm hand comes to rest on his cheek.

“Laddie. Look at me. That did not happen yesterday. Stannis died _eight years_ ago _. You_ died eight years ago.”

His breath stalls in his throat.

The room begins to spin.

 Everything feels like it’s far away and he _wants to breathe,_ he really does. but it’s all going much too fast. It doesn’t make sense. It _can’t_ make sense. But the city. The Lady Commander. The King’s hand. It can’t be _now_ but can’t be eight years from now either, surely?

“H-how?” He blurts out, before his knees give in.

Thankfully, there’s a pair of arms there to catch him.

“Alright. Settle…settle. Calm down. Keep breathing.” Ser Davos’s voice, miles away and yet still there. At some point someone helps to get him seated on a bench by the windowsill, but Jon doesn’t dare to look outside.

_Eight years…_

_Eight fucking years…_

“Here.” Lord Tyrion hands him a cup of wine.

He gulps it down in one go, and is handed another one directly after that.

“Are you that eager for him to vomit?” Ser Brienne scoffs at the Imp.

“Have a bit of compassion, he needs something to help him come to terms with what he’s just heard.” He doesn’t even sound contrite.

“If you intend to give him two cups of wine every time we tell him something shocking, he’ll be dead before the evening.” The Lady Commander isn’t willing to give him an inch.

Ser Podrick’s face drifts into view, giving Jon an apologetic smile, before gently taking the cup from him again.

“Would you like me to look at that?” He whispers and points at the injury on his hand.

Jon nods again. The simplicity of the act feels grounding, like something he can overcome. He only needs to take it one step at a time.

“What happened?” He looks at the lords and ladies around him.

“Oh, where to begin?” Lord Tyrion sighs.

“I know where to begin. Right where he ended. -” Ser Davos replies, before looking at Jon again. “- Yes, you died eight years ago. But unlike Stannis, you didn’t actually stay dead. It’s bloody mad, I know. Melisandre brought you back, the stab-wounds still fresh on you.”

“They aren’t there now.” He reaches up his shirt and shows them the unblemished chest.

“Well, I’ll be fucked…”Davos sighs. “No. You know what? It doesn’t matter. The clergy can sort that out later. Melisandre brought you back and you wanted leave the North. Go south. Get warm.”

“Leave? But the dead? The White Walkers? I can’t have…” In the very short time since he’s been in King’s Landing, Jon has wanted nothing more than to return to Castle Black. Return to normalcy.

“Don’t worry. You didn’t go. Lady Sansa came looking for you.”

“Sansa? Is she alright?” A warmth blooms up in his chest. His sister. His only remaining family. She came to him when he needed her most. They might not always have gotten along in the past, but it would be so good to see her again.

“Alright and then some. She holds the North now.” Lord Tyrion smiles.

“So…she married a Bolton?” Jon understands. Or at least, he thinks he does. It’s not an easy place out there for a young woman, she’d have had to do the necessary thing to survive, even if that entailed marrying into the scum that murdered Robb.

“Littlefinger arranged a match for her with Roose Bolton’s sadistic bastard.” Ser Brienne’s voice is filled with an unspoken wrath, but the names mean very little to Jon.

“What happened?” He swallows, already dreading the answer.

“She fed her ‘husband’ to his own dogs and had the man who sold her to him executed for treason.” Suddenly, the anger has turned to pride.

“Sansa? Sweet, ladylike Sansa did that? Are you sure you’re not talking about Arya?” Because woe to the man who tries to hurt his wild, baby sister.

“She’s had to adapt to beastly circumstances, Jon, and has learned to treat beasts in the only way they deserve to be treated.” Tyrion again.

“You took back Winterfell together. -” Ser Davos adds, getting back to the heart of the matter. “- And the men of the North crowned you their king.”

“Me? A king? I-” Jon starts, and images of Robb begin to dance around in his mind.

“We know. We know. You don’t want it.” The imp scoffs.

“Well, I suppose I can think of things I’d rather be doing, but it’s not as if I wouldn’t _want_ it.”

A King in the North.

Respected by his people _._

 _His people._ He would have a people. He’d be a part of something. He’d become someone worth looking at. No longer staring from the outside in. He’d be up there with Robb, with Torrhen, with all those Starks that came before them.

It’s almost as heady as the thought of being a Stark himself.

But no, Winterfell _isn’t_ his. The North _isn’t_ his. It belongs to a trueborn Stark. It’s not something he can just take for his own. Sansa ruling there is right, it’s _just._ No matter how much he might wish it to be different.

“So, what did I do? As king?” He asks, because he may have been a king once, but it sure seems as if he isn’t one now. They all know him as the Lord Commander, which means that at some point, he returned to his duties.

“Well…” Tyrion starts, looking at the other occupants in the solar.

“You went looking for allies. You needed allies and dragonglass. To defeat the White Walkers.” Ser Davos tells him.

“That makes sense.” He nods, because yes, the Night’s Watch and the Free Folk and the North cannot beat the oncoming army on its own. He learned that lesson at Hardhome, and he learned it well.

“I had sent you a letter to come and meet Daenerys Targaryen.” Tyrion sounds subdued, and the atmosphere in the room suddenly changes. Ser Brienne turns to look at the city down below, a dark sort of sadness fills the eyes of Ser Davos and even Ser Podrick stops bandaging Jon’s hand.

“A Targaryen? Who is she?” He tries to read the answer from their faces. The real answer. Not the summarized version he’s no doubt about to get.

“She was Aerys Targaryen’s last remaining child. She’d spent most of her life living in Essos amongst the Dothraki, fighting slavers and amassing power before coming to Westeros. She’s also the first person in centuries to hatch not one, but _three_ living dragons.”

“Hence my interest in her.”

“Yes, well, your interest in her reached further than just the dragons.” Ser Davos scoffs.

“There was dragonglass hidden underneath Dragonstone. We agreed that you would be able to mine it in exchange for -”

“Beg your pardon, Lord Hand, but I think we’re skipping over a very relevant part of the agreement here. -” Davos again. “- Mostly in that it wasn’t an _agreement._ ”

“I was getting to that.” Tyrion tries.

“Were you now? Were you going to tell Jon here that she took our weapons the moment we set foot on the Island? That she demanded Jon _bend the knee_ and _give up his kingdom_ and that you, as Hand of the Queen, _had concealed_ all of her intentions in your letter to us?” Ser Davos barks.

“Bend the knee?” He splutters. Surely, he didn’t…? He wouldn’t have…?

“I might have put it differently, but yes. I suppose that is what happened, in the crudest sense of the word. -” The shame in Tyrion’s eyes betrays the truth in Davos’ statement. “- Regardless, Daenerys agreed that you could mine the dragonglass and that we would try to negotiate a truce with Cersei until the threat to the North was dealt with.”

“The threat to the North?!-” Jon sneers. “-The threat to the North? _Really_? Because surely the White Walkers will stop at the borders to the Riverlands. They’ll not hurt the people in the South. Oh no, Southern men and _an army of dead men_ will get along quite nicely. Best we go and save _just the North_ then.”

He sees Hardhome in his mind’s eye again. He always sees Hardhome now. When he drifts off, whenever his mind is unoccupied, whenever he gets distracted.

It’s always Hardhome.

“You’re right. Of course, you’re right, but it wasn’t that simple. Daenerys came back to take the throne and Cersei wasn’t going to let her, so unless we could show them both what was at stake, they weren’t going to help. -” Tyrion explains.

Jon rests head in his hands. He understands it to some degree. It was always going to be difficult to convince the world. He was always going to have to persuade the South that what was happening was real and urgent, but perhaps…perhaps he might have thought that someone would believe the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch when he told them that _the reason for their very existence_ had come knocking.

“- You did it, though. At great cost to yourself and Daenerys. You went beyond the Wall and brought a Wight back for everyone to witness and _it worked_. A truce was brokered. You took the dragonglass, the dragons, her unsullied army and her Dothraki horde with you to defeat the Night King.”

He nods. That’s good. He did good.

“Without bending the knee.” Jon murmurs.

 Tyrion swallows hard and closes his eyes.

“You, like many of us, believed that Daenerys was the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, that she would do rule kingdoms justly. So…you’d…-”

“No.-” He replies. His exhaustion has turned to agitation. “- No!”

“Jon…” The imp tries.

“No. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t just…just give up my home like that. _My people._ You’re lying!” It’s sounds impossible.

“You fell in love, Jon. You _loved_ her.”

“ _Love doesn’t justify handing over a kingdom_!” His thoughts drift back to Robb again. To noble and brave Robb who fought for independence, who _died_ so that the North would no longer have suffer under a southern regime.

And his forebears…

His grandfather Rickard and his uncle Brandon, who were murdered by the mad king, and now Jon supposedly went and gave their land to the man’s daughter?

“I-it’s a trick. It must’ve been. -” He stutters. “- I needed her troops, I must’ve pretended to…”

After all, he’d done the same to Ygritte.

“It wasn’t a trick.” Tyrion croaks.

“I wouldn’t have given up the North without a _reason!_ ” He bellows, and slams his hands on the table so hard that the pitcher of wine on top of it falls down and shatters into a million pieces.

“You had a reason.”

“Love is not a reason! It’s not…Love is-” He rakes a hand through his hair.

“Love is the death of duty.” The imp rasps and something in Jon just stops. A cold shiver runs down his spine.

“Who told you that?” He sags back on the bench.

“You did. Because it was true. Because you understood the good she could do. The way she could protect the North. You knew what love could do and because she loved you, she gave you her armies. Her dragons.”

“Yeah, fat lot of good those did.” Ser Podrick suddenly pipes up. There’s a tremble in his voice that belies the calm and generous character he’d displayed before and it seems as though he is as upset as Jon himself is.

“Pod, you know that without those dragons we would’ve-” Tyrion again.

“Without those dragons we would’ve fought our battles at Castle Black, away from the people. Away from the children. Do you know how many people would still be alive if it wasn’t for those fucking-”

“Ser Podrick!” Ser Brienne interrupts.

“Sorry. You’re right, My Lady Commander. I’m sorry.” He sighs.

“We will discuss this in due time.” She lays a hand on his shoulder.

“No. Wait. Hold on. What does he mean by that? Why didn’t we fight our battles at Castle Black?” Jon’s heart seems to be lodged in his throat, because Castle Black is their stronghold. It is defensible. It is secure, despite its flaws.

If the dead make it past Castle Black…

They might’ve lost already.

The panic clawing at his throat must be showing on his face, because the Lady Commander promptly steps in and takes over from Lord Tyrion.

“Daenerys Targaryen lost one of her dragons beyond the Wall. The Night King resurrected the beast and flew it back. He then used dragonfire to blow a hole in the Wall big enough for his army to pass through.”

“The Night’s Watch…?” Jon already knows the answer before she tells him.

“All but gone. -” She replies. “- The dead marched on Last Hearth and then towards Winterfell. We were ready for them there, though. Everyone had gathered. The armies of Daenerys. The armies of the North. The Armies of the Vale. Even your brother Bran and your sister Arya made their way home.”

“Bran and Arya are alive?” Despite the severity of the situation, Jon’s heart does an uptick and he finds himself smiling.

Sansa rules the North.

Arya is alive.

Bran is alive.

He has family somewhere out there.

“Yes. They’re alive. Though not untouched by the years that have passed. -” Podrick nods. “- They’ve changed, but they’re still very much alive.”

“In fact, none of us would be here now if it wasn’t for them and the remarkable abilities they possess.” Tyrion breathes out.

“What do you mean?”

“Bran has become the Three-Eyed Raven, a being that can see all of the past, the present and the future. Arya was trained by the Faceless Men. She’s a weapon that strikes from the dark.” He explains.

“And together they orchestrated the demise of the Night King. Bran set up a trap in the Godswood of Winterfell and used himself as bait. Arya snapped the trap shut and destroyed the Night King once and for all, bringing down his entire army with him.” Podrick adds, a small smile is visible on his face once more.

Jon closes his eyes. Has to force himself to keep breathing.

“Are you sure? He’s really gone?” His voice sounds unfamiliar, as if it is coming from a faraway place. Somewhere not quite real, a place he hopes might exist but doesn’t dare to dream about. Where he has a family. Where that same family is _safe_ from the impossible abyss of _that_ death.

“We were there. All of us.” Ser Brienne replies.

“Well, all of us except our Benerro here.” Tyrion nods at the dark-skinned man with the flames on his cheek. He’s been so quiet, Jon nearly forgot he was there at all.

“The realm has been safe from those monsters for the past five years.” Davos’s voice pierces through the mist in his head, and a hand lands on his back, holding Jon steady in the here and now.

It’s real then.

It’s really real.

Unless this is some beautiful fever dream that the gods have given him in his moment of dying, and even if that is the case, then Jon will happily take it.

Perhaps it isn’t so bad that he bent the knee then, that he gave up the most important title in his life. The men and women in the North might be mad at him, but at least they’ll be alive enough to _be_ mad. At least they’re not a dreadful force marching upon King’s Landing.

“So, is Daenerys Targaryen the one who’s sitting on the throne now?” He asks and the same oppressive silence of before returns with a vengeance.

A muscle at Tyrion’s lips twitches.

The Lady Commander turns back to stare out the window.

Ser Davos removes his hand from Jon’s back, and there’s an unholy storm brewing in Podrick’s eyes.

“No. No, she not sitting on it. And she never will.” The young knight replies curtly, making it immediately clear that her position is no longer a matter of debate.

Whatever this woman has done, it is enough to warrant a deadly glare on the kindest face Jon has seen in the Capital so far.


	4. A Blazing End

Jon looks around the solar, waiting for anyone to continue the story, to explain why the woman with three…no, two dragons, isn’t sitting on the throne.

Everyone else, however, has drawn their gaze to Tyrion, expecting him to finish what they’ve started.

Still, he remains silent.

“Coward.-” Ser Davos mutters under his breath. “- Fine, you won’t tell him? I will.”

“Tell me what?” Because something is wrong here. Something doesn’t add up. The Night King is dead. Cersei is no longer queen. Neither is this Targaryen. So, why is everyone acting as if they’re staring down a great calamity?

“The truth about your mother.”

Suddenly, Jon wishes he hadn’t let the pitcher of wine clatter on the floor, because this? This is going to hurt. Not in the way their tales about the Night King did. Not even in the way their words about Sansa, Arya and Bran did.

This is a shard that’s lodged deep within him. That has sat there untouched for most of his life. Father’s words before he’d joined the Night Watch had wrenched it partially loose, but once he realized that Eddard Stark would never come North again, Jon had resigned himself to not knowing. To letting it go and focussing on things that mattered more.

Things that are gone now.

“What do you know about my mother?” He whispers.

“I know that she gave birth to you in a tower in Dorne.” Ser Davos bluntly tells him.

“In Dorne?! So my name is Sand, not Snow?” Jon had known that Father had brought him back from the south after the war, and that if the situation had differed even slightly, he’d have been known as Jon Waters. Or Jon Rivers. Or something like that.

But Dorne?

Dorne is a long way from what he’d imagined.

He doesn’t even look like a Dornish man.

“Not quite. It might have been, if you weren’t a legitimate son.” Davos says, but the words sound foreign to Jon. How can they not? It’s nonsense. If Jon was a legitimate son of Eddard Stark, then that would mean that his mother was Catelyn Tully, which would mean that he and Robb were what? Twins? Which wouldn’t explain why Father supposedly brought him home before Lady Catelyn and Robb, but those were just stories of course, perhaps that’s just what they told the people of Winterfell.

But if he’s not a bastard, then why treat him as such? Why has he spent his entire life being removed from a family and a mother if he’s a trueborn part of them? It feels too harsh and disturbing to make sense of. No, the Starks are not that cruel. They wouldn’t _do_ that. Despite her misgivings about him, Jon is sure that if Catelyn had been his mother, she would’ve loved him the same as she loved Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran and Rickon.

“I-I don’t understand. Is my name Stark, then?”

“Your name is not Stark, because your father was not a Stark. Your _mother_ was.”

His mother?

But what Stark woman would ever go to the south and…

Oh.

_Oh…_

_Oh, no._

There was only one Stark woman in the south around the time of his conception and his birth, and she did not go there willingly.

He is not his father’s son.

He’s his aunt’s.

The woman who was spirited away by Rhaegar Targaryen and who was missing for _months_ on an end.

Enough time to conceive a child. Certainly, enough time to be wed. Perhaps even to get another marriage nullified in the process.

“Davos…Is…Is my name Targaryen?”

Could it be true? Jon’s quite sure that he doesn’t _want_ it to be true. Sure, he’d always hoped that his mother would be a kind and beautiful and of noble birth, but more than anything, he’d hoped she’d be _alive_.

And if what is being implied here is true, then his mother has been with him all this time, lying in her final resting place not far beneath the home he lived in.

“Yes, lad, it’s Targaryen.” It’s the softest sound, but somehow, it stings about as much as those seven knives to the gut did.

Jon squeezes his eyes shut and lets the tears run freely over his cheeks.

_Father…Oh, father. Is that why you refused to tell me the truth? Because you lied to your wife and your friend and the entirety of the seven kingdoms._

He’d protected Jon. Had made sure that Jon would _always_ be Jon Snow, because if Robert Baratheon were to ever hear of a Targaryen living in his kingdoms…

He would not have shown mercy to the son of the heir.

The son of the heir, who became the heir himself at the moment of his father’s passing.

And if Jon is Rhaegar’s son, then he was not merely a threat to Robert.

“Did she know?” He blurts out.

“Who, your mother?” Davos raises an eyebrow.

“No, Daenerys Targaryen. Did she know what I was to her? Did I know what she was to me?” Because if it was her goal to get the Iron Throne and she had found out that there was another ruler with the same pedigree, then that might’ve made things more complex.

But conversely, if they were family then perhaps, she and Jon found kinship amongst one another. If she could respect him as one of her own, and he could likewise do the same, then perhaps bending the knee was not a submission to the south, but perhaps a more equal, joint rule for both.

“Bran told you. You spoke of it to Daenerys and she made you swear secrecy.” Tyrion tells him.

“Why?”

“I made matters between the two of you difficult.” The imp’s expression is growing more and more uncomfortable, but Jon has neither the time nor the patience to indulge him in this.

“Difficult how?”

“Well, you loved her and she loved you, so-”

“In what way did I love her?” He wipes away the tears that are still falling, simply because he has to get it clear, has to forge this iron while it’s still hot.

Afterwards…

He’ll think of what to do afterwards.

“In all the ways men love women.” Tyrion murmurs and Jon growls, hiding his head in his hands once more.

So, not only is he _not_ the son of Eddard Stark, he’s also inherited the vile Targaryen trait of laying with his own blood.

“Were there bastards? Did any children come of the union?” He has to know. If there is a child. If this foolish version of himself truly did the unthinkable then he at least owes the babe the responsibility of caring for him or her.

“No, the Dragon Queen was barren.” The Lady Commander replies, eyes still fixed on the city below.

Still, Jon nods, even if she can’t see it.

_Good._

That’s good. He may be many things now, but he is not _that._

“So, I fucked my aunt and apparently I enjoyed it.-” He scoffs. “- what happened next?”

Because he might as well know.

“You told your secret to Arya and Sansa. The latter of whom told me. I then told Varys and it caused some discord within the ranks. Bear in mind that all of this happened while we were marching on King’s Landing to defeat Cersei. -” Tyrion admits. “- People loved you, wanted _you_ to lead them because you were a man and they knew you and they believed in you, but we both chose to remain loyal to Daenerys. And then, after a while, there were some who thought our queen was growing a bit…unstable.”

It’s all very hazy and Jon doesn’t really want to care about this other version of himself. If people had wanted him to lead, sure, he could lead them. It wouldn’t be pleasant, or easy, or fun but neither was taking a piss miles beyond the Wall and he done that several times a day too.

If his aunt wanted him to swear secrecy over his identity, fine, he could, but there would have to be a price, a reasonable bargain, like say, the North keeping its sovereignty. Hells, if she’d agreed to that, Jon would happily go back home and never tell another soul.

Evidently though, that’s not how it went down.

“A bit unstable? Are you joking?” Ser Podrick speaks up again.

“Cersei cost her another dragon and a dear friend and Daenerys believed that the entirety of King’s Landing would threaten her rule.” Tyrion tries, but it seems to be a losing battle, because Ser Podrick is now aided by Ser Brienne.

“Plenty of people have lost a great deal during the wars, and none of them set a dragon loose on the _bloody capital_ of the Realm.” She snaps.

“A million innocents, caught in that monstrous inferno simply because _that woman_ did not respect their surrender. People we _knew._ People we’d worked with day in and day out died in the flames of her anger.” The young knight adds.

Something in Jon shifts again, and the picture that he had been trying to paint for himself suddenly becomes red with blood. Because a lot of things have started to make sense. The painful silences, the worn-down bricks of the Keep, the black scorch marks that he saw while looking at the city. It wasn’t a natural disaster that had struck here.

It was an attack with intent.

An unnecessary one at that, if he has to believe the Kingsguard.

“You say that like I don’t know it! -” Tyrion hisses at the two of them, eyes red with tears. “- Like I’m not aware of the mistake we made! You weren’t there. You have no idea what it was like to have to…to realize that…”

“We were loyal to her. -”Jon’s voice is deceptively calm. He doesn’t really know why. Perhaps because it’s too much. It’s all too much. He cannot have been a part of _that._ It can’t have been him. “- Are you trying to tell me that we did not see this coming? That we couldn’t have known _this_ would happen? That we could’ve done nothing to stop her beforehand?”

“You’ll think me a fool, I’m sure, but no. She was good. She was kind, and she was just for almost as long as I have known her and in hindsight I can see…but it was so sudden and so…it was as if she’d suddenly been replaced by a Tyrant.”

“Tyrants are not born overnight. -” Jon sighs. “- they grow and fester. Ser Davos, you once told me that Stannis was a good man and a good king. But what he did to Mance…”

“And his daughter.” Davos finishes, and there’s a story there. One that Jon will hear, but later. When he’s had some time to find the space for everything else that has happened.

“We should have seen this. We should’ve stopped this when we had the chance.” And when he says ‘we’ Jon finds that he means it. There’s a distance between him and the man who did this, but it was still _Jon_ at the end of the day. A version of him, anyway. Which means he is as responsible for this as Tyrion is. No wonder they sent him back to the wall. He’s got blood on his hands, and a lot of it.

“We did stop it. After she destroyed King’s Landing, you drove a knife through her heart, and I have dedicated my life to ensure that her successors will never enact such a vengeance on the people again.” He wonders if Tyrion has spent the last few years trying to convince himself that he did everything he could. That there was no other way.

Still, Jon doubts that.

There’s always a way. The fact that they defeated the inevitability of the Night King proves that.

“And which successor is that? Who did you put on the throne afterwards?” Because it’s clear that Tyrion still holds most of the power in the seven kingdoms. If anyone has shaped it since the Dragon Queen’s death, it will have been him.

“That would be Bran the Broken, First of His Name, Three-Eyed Raven, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Six Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.” Podrick rattles off.

“Bran? You mean my little brother? You named my _crippled_ little brother ‘The Broken’? Seven Hells, what title did you give yourself? Tyrion Lannister, the _Imp_ of the King?” Jon squints his eyes at the man in question.

“I…there was no offense in it. Remember what I told you once, long ago. Wear what you are like an armour, so the world cannot harm you with it.”

“I’ll remember that, _Imp._ ” It might be childish and petty, but really, it’s one thing to call _him_ a bastard, but he can’t just proclaim Bran a broken man to the whole of the…

_Hold on._

“Six kingdoms? Did you just say six kingdoms?”

“Your brother allowed the North to secede. Sansa has officially been crowned Queen in the North.” Ser Brienne seems to have regained her sense of serenity.

He understands why.

“Right. Good. That’s good. What of Rickon, is he with her? Is he here?” His heart almost doesn’t dare to hope. But if Bran _is_ indeed alive and a king no less, then perhaps Rickon was spared too.

“I…I’m sorry, Jon. The boy was captured by the Boltons, and once they believed he’d outlived his usefulness…” Ser Davos mutters.

Jon takes a deep, unsteady breath and tries not to feel the pain all over again. Rickon is dead. Has been for years. He’d believed it to be so and now it truly is.

And yet…

He was so, so young.

_Couldn’t we just spare the children in our bloodshed? Why is always the youngest and most vulnerable that get caught up in the wars?_

“Well, if my brother is king, I would very much like to see him now.” Jon nods, trying to imagine Bran after eight, no, not eight, _thirteen_ years now. He, at least, won’t be a child anymore. He’ll be a man, older than Jon himself is, if he’s counted the years right.

“Ah, yes. About that…” Ser Davos mutters.

“What?”

“The King is missing.” Brienne reports.

“How?!” Jon splutters.

“It started about a year ago. Perhaps even longer, but it seems that the actions of Daenerys have not just left their mark on King’s Landing. -” Tyrion is staring longingly at the broken pitcher, still lying on the floor. “- For a while now, there have been more and more followers of the Red God who have…strayed from the path.”

Suddenly, the quiet man in the corner speaks up.

“They believe that the last of the dragons was more than just a dragon. That it was somehow the very embodiment of R’hllor and that the Lord speaks to them in this form, telling them to sow destruction across the land.” He growls.

“And of course, like the good little priests and priestesses that they are, they decided to start by wreaking havoc on King’s Landing.” Davos grouses.

“Start? Need I remind you that the first victims of these _heretics_ were priests and priestesses themselves. -” The man, Benerro, snaps. “- They _ransacked_ the temple of Volantis, killed anyone who dared to object to their violent mindset. I had to flee for my life because you Westerosi animals couldn’t keep your own kings and queens under control.”

“Oh? And I suppose you weren’t rejoiced to hear that there was someone out there raining fire upon the non-believers?” Davos again.

“Whatever I may have believed about Daenerys Targaryen, I never believed that she or her beast should be raised as an idol to supplant the _Lord of Light_ himself _._ I do not preach for violence, Onion Knight. I preach for freedom.”

“Ser Davos, Lord Benerro. Please. We are all on the same side here. Whatever we may or may not feel about one another, I think we can all agree that we don’t want to see anyone burnt again.” Tyrion susses.

“As tragic as all of that is, I would still like to know what happened to Bran.” Jon pipes up.

“It happened about a fortnight ago.-” Ser Podrick starts “-The cultists had infiltrated Red Keep sometime after midnight, and had begun setting everything alight. The whole castle was in an uproar.”

“I can imagine.” he hums.

“I was with king Bran in his chambers when it happened, so it fell to me to protect him when they came looking for him. I suspect that that was their intent all along, to kill the king. But there were six of them, all at once and…I was able to keep the first four out…the other two, though. They managed to slip past me. I failed him…I failed at my duties.” The young knight sounds wracked with guilt.

“And Bran would scarcely have the means to defend himself.” Jon reluctantly agrees.

“That’s what I feared as well, but when I finally did make it into his chambers he was just…gone. The chair was still sitting there, untouched. The two cultists were yelling, probably just as confused as I was. Well, at least they were, until I killed them.” Podrick rubs a hand over his forehead.

“Have you been looking for him since?”

“We’ve tried, but it’s hard to know where to start, given that he’s left without a trace and we have no means of tracking him.” Ser Brienne replies.

“Until now.” Benerro tells them, eyeing Jon in a very peculiar manner.

“What do you mean, until now?” Tyrion asks.

“The cultist attacks have been growing more erratic and desperate. They’ve turned to the most unlikely kinds of magic to find your king. To kill him. Even if it means bringing down the entire the city with him. You said you found him by the dragon’s skull? The big one, right?”

“Yes.” Podrick nods.

“They were trying to bring forth a dragon king, but the Lord of Light will not simply indulge their whims. He never has. Not even for his most faithful followers. -” A muscle in Benerro’s neck twitches.”- So, rather than giving them the monster they desired, he sent us you. A dragon king, but only in very broadest sense of the word. Furthermore, you, as kin to the actual king, are directly opposed to their plans of killing him.”

“Perhaps I’m asking the wrong question here, given that it’s magic we’re talking about, but _how_ in the Seven Hells did they do that? I saw Melisandre bring Jon back, but she’d had his body right there with her. Does that mean these cultists had Jon’s body too?” Ser Davos looks at him.

“That would suggest that our Jon, far up North, is dead. -” Tyrion speculates. “- Yet, we’ve not received news of his passing.”

“And it doesn’t explain why this one here is missing the last eight years of his life.” Brienne adds.

“I…they would need _some_ part of him, yes.” Benerro’s brows are knitted together, disturbing the pattern of flames on his skin.

“But why bring a part of Jon Snow with you if you’re planning to resurrect Balerion the Black Dread?” Ser Davos again.

It’s clear that all of the people here have been arguing with each other daily before Jon came along. The speed and the familiarity with which they skate past the subject is hard for him to keep up with.

“Would they need to have a _physical_ piece of Jon?” Ser Podrick pipes up.

“What do you mean?” Benerro asks.

In response he shows them a small red flint of a stone held between his thumb and his index finger.

“I once spoke to Ser Beric Dondarrion. He’d been brought back to life by a red priest six times, and he’d said that every time it happened, it felt as though only half of him came back. Ever since, I’ve been wondering where the other halves of him have gone.”

“That stone. It belonged to a red priestess once.” Benerro takes the flint from him and studies it carefully.

“Yes. I believe it did. -” Podrick replies, before pointing at the Valyrian Dagger. “- And if that can make its way back from the North and into cultist hands…”

“You think it’s Melisandre’s? The stone?” Ser Davos’s eyes have grown wide.

“It’s the only way I can imagine Jon being here. She brought back _half_ of Jon eight years ago, just like Thoros brought back _half_ of Beric. Maybe…maybe you’re just the other half of Jon? The bit that was still trapped in the stone.” He shrugs at Jon.

“Where did you get such an insight in matters beyond the mortal realm, boy?” Benerro asks him.

“Try spending day in and day out listening to the Three-Eyed Raven himself. It’d be more impressive if I _hadn’t_ learned anything about magic in the past five years.” Podrick smiles patiently.

“So, we’re considering this as an option? That there are _two_ Jon Snows now?” Tyrion harrumphs.

“The rite of the Last Kiss, as we call it, is not well understood, even amongst the wisest of us. -” Benerro tells him “- And the Stygai stones can hold otherworldly forces, that much we know. So, I would not discard it out of hand.”

“Well, what do we have here, then? A quarter of Jon Snow?” Ser Davos tries.

“Given that the cultists were trying to bring back a powerful dragon instead of a mere man and that the stone holding the remains burst during the ritual, I’d say no. Not a quarter. The full half. He is as much Jon Snow as the man you left in the North is.” Benerro explains.

“And I suppose that makes me a cog in your God’s machinations?” Jon groans.

“The Lord of Light does nothing without a reason. Your people are looking for a king with Stark blood and now here you are.”

“I will _not_ take my brother’s throne from him!” he snaps, because even if Bran isn’t his brother by blood he’s still…

He’s still Bran.

“And I don’t think you should, as it would solve very few of our problems. However, right now, you hold the closest connection to him. You would _be_ him, had the circumstances differed.” The priest seems wholly unconcerned by the suggestion of Jon becoming a usurper.

“So, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if anyone can find him, it’ll be you. The Lord has designed it to be that way.” There’s a badly concealed glee on Benerro’s face.

And of course, why wouldn’t there be? If what they’re speculating is true, then this is a very tangible piece of proof that the Red God is watching over them rather than over the cultists.

“Alright then, Jon, what do you suggest we do?” Tyrion deadpans.

“Wait, what? Me?” It’s one thing to say that he’s been resurrected for some divine purpose, it’s something wholly different to expect him understand said purpose.

“Leave him be. He doesn’t know anything.-” Ser Brienne steps in once again, and if there is some part of Ygritte out there somewhere too, she’s laughing at him now. “- The keep is a mess, we have bodies to take care of, cultists to interrogate and only an hour of daylight left to do so. Get the boy a place to sleep and something to eat. We’ll deal with this in the morning.”

Now that? That’s a plan Jon can wholly endorse.  



	5. An Empty Throne

The candlelight is soft, the night is warm and the chambers they’ve put him in are rich with the scents of summer. And yet, Jon hasn’t been able to find a moment of rest ever since they brought him here. Instead, he’s been bent over a desk, staring at a piece of parchment as if it is his worst enemy and his closest friend all at the same time.

_~~My sweet sister,~~ _

_~~Most honourable Queen in the North,~~ _

_Dear Sansa,_

_~~I’ve missed you terribly and should have tried to~~ _

_~~My most heartfelt congratulations on leading our kingdom to indepe~~ _

_~~I’m so very sorry for giving up the North and~~ _

_I suppose this will come as a surprise to you but-_

He sighs and puts the quill back in the inkpot. This is hopeless. His hand hurts, the cut is bleeding through his bandage and he’s making no progress on this letter one way or another. Perhaps it would be easier if he would be writing to Arya, or Bran, but since _both_ of them have disappeared to places unknown, Jon has no choice but to write the hardest letter first.

The only letter.

How do you tell the family member you know the least that you’ve come back from the dead _again,_ and that you wished your other self had done just about everything differently?

How do you even ask forgiveness for falling so stupidly in love that you handed over a kingdom to a bloodthirsty monster?

How do you explain betraying one family for another? Especially when that one family had loved and sheltered you to the best of their abilities in the _home that you had wanted give away._

Jon groans.

If he and Sansa had taken Winterfell back together, then they must’ve gotten along at one point in time. Had they found a way to recapture the intimacy of their youth, or had they created a new way to be together? The simple answer is that Jon doesn’t know. That he has no way to know, because he isn’t _that_ Jon. He wasn’t there. He has no idea how she feels about him now, after everything that has transpired between them. Is she hurt? Is she angry? Is she sad? Is she happy? Is she all of that and maybe even more?

At least if this were Arya, he’d be able to gauge her reaction. She’d be mad, he guesses, but so long as it all ends in a free and independent North, Arya wouldn’t hold a grudge. And Bran? Sweet and kind Bran would probably just be happy to see him again.

The candle flickers, and when Jon looks over to it, he can see that it is barely more than a stump. Is it truly that late already? Has he spent all these hours staring at these letters without producing at least _something_ to tell Sansa.

He sighs and angrily balls up the parchment. It’s no good. He’ll have to try again tomorrow.

Right after he’s figured out how to find Bran. Which, if he does that, then perhaps Sansa might be able forgive some of his previous transgressions.

Seven knows he might be able to as well.

But if he’s not writing the letter, then he ought to go to bed. Consequently, that means he’ll have to find some way to sleep with the knowledge that’s dancing around his mind.

_The Night King is dead._

_I helped a tyrant destroy King’s Landing._

_Father is not my father._

_Bran and Arya are alive._

_I missed eight years of my life._

_I was a King in the North._

_I fell in love with a monster._

He tosses and turns in the big bed they gave him. Tries to imagine wat a god, any god really, would want from him. How he’s meant to find Bran. If Benerro is even right about the whole situation. Eventually, though, the surroundings of his chamber begin to fade away and the cream coloured ceiling gradually turns into the crisp white snow of the North.

The limited scents of summer turn towards the vast array of smells that belong to winter. His own still form changes to one that is trotting through the cold.

He looks around, and behind him sits a forest he must’ve just left. To his right, there’s a mountain in the distance and if he stares up ahead, he can see the outline of a small lake. Parts of it might be frozen, but with the way the weather has turned, Jon is sure that he can quench his thirst there.

He can see his breath out in front of him, but doesn’t feel the frost too much. Not even on his bare feet. It’s therefore relatively easy to reach the waterside. In the reflection of the lake’s surface, Jon can see thousands of stars glittering above him, as well as the green slivers of the aurora passing over his head.

But that isn’t what catches his attention. No, that is drawn to his reflection instead. It isn’t what he remembers it to be. There are scars on his face, under his right eye, over his nose, up to his…What in the Seven Hells happened to his ear?!

He stands and stares at it for Gods know how long, trying to make sense of it all.

Still, eventually, his thirst conquers his vanity, and when he takes his first drink, the ripples of the water disturb his reflection to the point where it doesn’t matter anymore.  Once quenched, Jon doesn’t feel the need to look back at it.

It is what it is.

Besides, there are more interesting things to see here. He has half a mind to turn back to the forest, see what he might find there. But another scent has caught his nose and he’s compelled to see where it leads him instead.

It’s an earthy smell, something like moss or the trees right after it has rained. It doesn’t really belong here though, and when he follows it through the snow, he finds himself staring at something that doesn’t really belong either.

Footsteps.

A mark of bare feet trekking across the landscape. Towards the mountain, if he’s not mistaken. There’s more though. The feet are not what they should be. Jon has seen plenty of feet and these are not like that.

They’re…

It’s at the tip of his tongue, but he can’t seem to figure it out.

“Jon.” A voice calls out. Familiar and not. The cadence he knows, but the timbre is deeper than it once was.

He looks up, and there, in the middle of the white landscape, stands his brother. Or at least, Jon thinks it’s his brother. The face seems right, but it, like the voice, is not what it used to be. He’s grown into it. There’s a bit of his father, a bit of uncle Benjen, and a bit that’s wholly Bran.

Seeing him, though, after so long, sends a jolt of exuberance through Jon. He all but jumps up and sprints towards his brother.

“Hello there. -” Bran smiles and pats his neck. “- It’s been too long, hasn’t it?”

He wants to ask Bran so many things. What happened, if he’s alright, where he is, why he left, the list is nearly endless.

But Bran only has one thing to say to him:

“Come along then, follow me.” He gets up and turns around, walking towards the mountain.

However, before Jon can head out after him, the world begins to shift once more. Cold and snow are replaced by heat and twisted blankets, the white snow turns back into the cream coloured ceiling he left behind, and with an exhausted groan, Jon moves to sit up in the bed.

The sun hasn’t risen yet, but his own overly warm body and the discomfort it brings drives him to get up all the same. He shrugs off the shirt he’d been wearing and uses it to wipe the remainder of the sweat from his brow.

For once, Jon’s very glad he does not have his Night’s Watch uniform with him. Instead, he can relish in the lighter fabrics of the south.

His mind is still buzzing with thoughts of Bran, of what he’d seen and heard, both in the North and last night in the South.

And he’s not at all ready to try his hand at writing that damned letter again.

So, instead, he puts on the boots they gave him, and decides to find out what Red Keep really looks like these days.

There are a few guards here and there, carrying torches, but the rest of the Keep is lit by the light of the moon, which suits Jon just fine. He can see enough like this, and doesn’t stand out in the darkness that remains.

Most parts of the Keep are wholly indiscriminate from the rest. It’s all stone halls, lots of decorations, lots of flowers and plants and whatnot. There are hallways that have dead ends. Balcony’s that seem to be in nonsensical places. Most of it’s probably there just to hide the damage that they haven’t been able to repair yet.

Of course, there’s one room where they really can’t obscure what’s been done.

_The Throne Room._

Jon has seen plenty of pictures of it, in books and on paintings, so he immediately recognizes the large hall when he enters it.

Still.

It’s not like the drawings portrayed it. Not anymore.

First and foremost; it’s not an empty hall anymore. There’s more to this place than the Iron Throne now. There are tables set up throughout the room, between and around the large pillars, and most noticeably, one at the end of the hall, front and centre.

It looks like some strange variation of Winterfell’s hall, and Jon can scarcely stop himself from heading to the ‘high table’, which is standing at exactly the same height as every other table.

Behind it sit a series of steps. He imagines…or no, he _knows_ that at the top of them, there should be a throne.

 _The_ throne.

It isn’t there. The Iron Throne is gone, and when he makes his way up to the small plateau it presumably sat upon, he sees nothing but a flat, black mess.

Remnants.

Someone turned the very symbol of power in the Seven Kingdoms into a puddle of slag on the floor. And Bran had not ordered it to be removed. Had not sought to replace it either, because down at the high table, there is no throne, not even a more decorated chair than the rest. There’s simply an empty space at the centre of the table.

Because obviously, Bran would have no use for a large, stationary seat. Especially not one that sits at the top of a series of steps. Not when he evidently needs his own chair to move about in. Or at least, that’s what they told him.

Jon gently kicks against the slag on the floor, to see if it’ll come loose. It doesn’t. Seems to be part of the stone itself now. Part of history.

 _How fitting._ He thinks, but sees no reason to linger here.

If they’d put him here, if they’d crowned him instead of Bran, Jon hopes that he would’ve made the same wise decisions as his little brother has, even if he isn’t sure that he would’ve.

Not now that he’s heard about the crimes his other self has committed.

 _So many people dead, and for what?_ Jon muses as he wanders through the hallways of the keep. _For something as ephemeral as love?_

If that’s what it’s all been for, then he’s nothing but a fool and they should make him a jester, not a king.

The air on the streets of King’s Landing is cooler than that of the Red Keep. Furthermore, the people are asleep and there’s no-one out and about to witness the way he wanders about.

It isn’t actually all that long before he reaches one of the scorch marks he’d seen from up above. And truth be told, it looked less horrifying from up there than it does down here.

There’s the blackened earth, of course. The rubble he’d expected, but the people living amongst the rubble…

That, he didn’t see coming.

There are bedrolls and makeshift tents raised at various points along the mark. There are even ropes hanging around certain spaces, presumably marking them as someone’s plot. There are little walls erected here and there, but it’s not like it is in the intact parts of the city. It’s just scraps. Homelessness in another shape.

The people he sees lying here and there are not unmarked either. Men, women and children with damaged bodies, missing arms and legs, the wrinkled markings of a past fire riddled across their skins.

He’d helped save them from the Night King’s wrath, but in his blindness, he missed out on an equally destructive force standing right by his side.

What hubris his other self must’ve possessed. To look a danger like this in the eyes and assure himself it was nothing.

Jon swallows, tries to figure out what he is to do next. A part of him feels that he ought to stay here. That he should face the horrors he’s responsible for. But another tells him that this is just the start of it. There’s so much more to see. To face. If he’s ever to understand what happened here. He’ll have to move onwards.

What sets his feet in motion once more, what makes him go further beyond the scorch mark, is the knowledge that he can mean very little for these people in the here and now. He vows to talk to Tyrion tomorrow, ask him _why_ after five years, they haven’t rebuilt these parts of the city yet. _Why_ these people are still out here like this.

It’ll have to do for now.

There’s a few more turns and a few more alleys Jon passes through before he reaches something else that stands out wholly and completely in the streets of King’s Landing.

If he had to guess, Jon would think it to be a sept of some kind. It’s enormous. Looks like it has about seven sides to it, and the large doors are open, even at this late, or early, hour. 

It isn’t the great sept of Baelor, though. Can’t be. He knows that that particular sept has a statue of Baelor the Blessed standing in front of it, while this place has maybe two or three simple steps before you’d be standing right at the entrance. There’s no bell tower either. Furthermore, the building is not made of white marble. The stones are far too dark, even in the dim light of the moon. They seem almost black and stand out amongst the yellowish bricks of the capital.

Now, Jon is not usually one to visit temples of any kind, but still, he finds himself drawn to it. Cannot resist the urge to walk into the bright light that lie beyond the slim windows and the entryway.

Once he’s there however, he immediately wishes he’d chosen differently.

Sure, there are torches and braziers scattered all around this place, but all they seem to light up are skulls.

Rows upon rows of human skulls.

They are lined up against the walls, from almost all the way down to the bottom right up to the point where they can all but touch the ceiling. It starts right next to the entrance and goes on and on and on until the back of the large, echoing space he’s landed himself in.

His breath is caught in his throat.

His heart is going a mile a minute.

Surely, he must be dreaming? This must be some kind of nightmare. A dark and twisted image of a sept that cannot exist in the waking world.

He puts a hand in front of his mouth and has to force himself to gulp in the barest hint of the incense-heavy air.

Jon doesn’t know what this place is. What it is meant to be, and yet, at the same time, he can feel the truth that lies at the heart of it.

Because where else would they have found so many human remains?

They’re all staring at them. The skulls. The empty spaces where their eyes used to be follow him around. Judge him for something he doesn’t remember doing.

His skin feels clammy with cold sweat, and his stomach is flipping so violently inside his gut that he’s sure he’ll throw up not long from now.

And so, like the feebleminded coward he is, Jon turns around to run. To get away from this _hell_ he found.

“You. It’s you.” A voice pierces through the haze in his mind, before he can even take the first step.

When he finds it in himself to look back, there’s a woman standing there. Her face is a patchwork of scars. Burns that have healed. Will never heal. And he’s not seen her before in his life, but she sure seems to know him

“I…uhm…” He croaks out.

“I didn’t think we’d ever see you here again.” She doesn’t sound angry. In fact, for all that she might look like a dark warlock with her black gown and hood, she seems to wish him no ill will in the slightest.

“You know me?” Jon tries.

“You don’t remember me?’ She counters.

He shakes his head.

“That’s alright. A lot of people don’t remember things from that day. The day the dragon came for us. -” The woman explains and Jon’s heart aches with regret.

What has he done to this poor soul? How many others like her are there out there?

“- I’ve…I wanted to thank you. Of course, once I found out who you were, I realized I never would be able to.” She helps him stand up straighter and leads him deeper into the twisted sept.

“What did I do?” He asks, trying to avoid the stares of the dead.

“You saved me. One of the Northern men, during the attack, he tried to force himself upon me. Maybe murder me. Probably. I’m not sure. You intervened. He did not relent. So, you killed him. One of your own men. You killed him for wanting to hurt me.” She mutters, staring out towards nothing.

“You did not escape unscathed, though.” He runs his hand over his own face, on the same place as where hers is damaged.

“I…I escaped the soldiers. Not the fire.”

“What is this place?” Jon blurts out as they make their way deeper into the structure.

“This is the House of the Stranger. See?” She points at something in the back. A statue. He hadn’t noticed it at first, what with being distracted by the skulls, but now that he has seen it, Jon wonders how he could’ve possibly missed it.

It’s a huge, dark figure that seems to fill the temple with a presence he’d rather not name. But it is undoubtedly the Stranger himself, with his back turned towards them, a hooded mantle hiding a face that is no doubt only half human.

“But you’re not a Silent Sister, are you?’ Because if she was, she would not have spoken.

“No.”

“So, does that mean that I can ask you your name?”

“You may, but I’d rather not give it, if it’s all the same.” The woman shrugs.

“Why not?”

“The skulls don’t have names. We put them all together and we want them to be remembered as such. We didn’t want there to be a difference between the rich and poor. Everyone here died of same cause, and it unites them. If I tell you my name, you’ll only remember me and you’ll no longer see the others.”

“I don’t think I could forget any of you.” Jon breathes.

“I’m glad I’m more memorable now.” She replies, and lets go of his arm.

“No, wait. That...me not remembering you has nothing to do with you. With how memorable you were or weren’t. -” Now how to explain that he isn’t actually the Jon she met? “- My memories have abandoned me altogether. So…I…I remember very little of the past eight years.”

“Hmmm, lucky you, I guess.” She gives him a glance that feels final.

“I’m sorry.” He mutters, not knowing what else there is to say.

“Don’t be sorry. Make sure it never happens again.” She gives him a rueful smile.

“Is this…? Can you be happy like this? Living this way?” Jon asks, and gestures at the temple around him, at the numerous displays of death that are everywhere.

“This is the only way I _can_ be happy. I am one of them and I am not one of them. Both of those thoughts are comforting. If I was out there, pretending to live another life, I would feel out of place and alone. Instead, when I’m here, I never forget that I’m fortunate where others are not.” It’s the last thing the woman tells him before she turns around and almost blends into the shadow of the statue.

And Jon? He stands there for a long while, looking up at the Stranger and the skulls, trying to untie the knot of his own emotions.

The skulls, for their part, don’t seem to be judging him anymore. Now, they’re begging him to not forget about them. To keep them in his mind whenever he does something. Whenever he makes a decision that could impact the lives of everyone around them.

This place, dark and unsettling as it may seem, holds something important to him. A piece that he, like the woman, can never let go of.

No matter how much Jon might want to think of this as a horrible nightmare, it isn’t. Likewise, just because he wasn’t here to witness the catastrophe, it doesn’t mean that his hands are clean. He is just as capable of hurting people. It’s in his blood. As a Targaryen, but as an ordinary man too.

He can spend the rest of his life wondering, like Tyrion, about what they should’ve done, where he went wrong, how he can dissuade his own guilt, but that isn’t the point.

None of that matters, at the end of it all.

All that matters is them.

Their empty eyes, longing to be remembered.

“Don’t be sorry. Make sure it never happens again.” He repeats, and nods.

His footsteps echo through the large space when he heads towards the doors. And once outside, Jon feels something of a weight slip off him. Not because he’s left the skulls and the woman behind, but because he didn’t.

Because even here outside and with his back towards the House of the Stranger, Jon still carries them with him. He’s _not_ going to forget and that, more than anything, makes him a different Jon than the one who chose love over everything else.

With a deep exhale, he slumps down on the steps of the temple, trying to decide where to go from here.

“So, you found the memorial, huh?” The early morning light catches against a golden plate of armour.

“Ser Podrick. -” Jon greets. “- How’d you find me?”

“Let’s call it a hunch, shall we? Shame, really. I had sort of hoped I’d be able to explain a thing or two about King’s Landing before you’d go and explore it, but I’m guessing it’s a bit late for that now.” He sits down next to Jon and hands him a piece of bread.

“I wouldn’t say you’re too late. I mean, I understand what it is now, but there’s still a lot I _don’t_ actually know.” he shrugs.

“Like what?”

“Like why is this here when there are still people sleeping on the streets? -” Jon turns back and looks at the dark building. “- And why does it look so different from everything else here?”

“Ah. Well, the people are still sleeping there because they own the land. We offered to house them elsewhere, but shockingly enough, they don’t much trust us to give the land back to them once we’ve built our buildings on them.” Podrick gives him a wry smile.

“I wonder why.” Jon deadpans while his mind drifts back to the likes of Cersei Lannister, Robert Baratheon and Aerys Targaryen.

“We’ve been trying to clear funds to aid them with the rebuilding, but the master of coin isn’t much interested in these parts of the city.” He grouses, and takes a bite from his own piece of bread.

Yeah, Jon’s quite sure they can do better than that. He doesn’t know who the master of coin is, but vows to have words with him.

He might not be a king anymore, but that doesn’t mean he can’t convince a man to care for his own damn citizens.

“And the building?” Jon asks once he’s put the matter of the gold at the back of his mind.

“Oh, that. Now, there’s a story worth telling. Basically, it’s the only thing everyone _could_ agree on. When the Unsullied finally gave back the city, it was…staggering. I don’t even know how to explain the desolation and the bodies and the smells…This was _weeks_ after what that woman and her dragon did.” Podrick sighs.

“Weeks?” He tries to imagine what that might’ve looked like, but comes up empty.

“Yes. I have no idea how those men could stand to live there like that, but the name Unsullied is wrong for them. They were nothing if not sullied. I suppose they must not’ve known how to clean up after a battle. I don’t know if they ever did that before. When you’re just a warrior and nothing more, I suppose it’s not really part of your nature.” The young knight shrugs.

“Suppose not.”

“But maybe it wasn’t…a bad thing. Well, it was a bad thing, obviously. Corpses were littered across the city, but at least this way, we could give them a proper farewell.”

“You didn’t bury them.”  Jon concludes

“It seemed…wrong. People weren’t ready to dump them all in a big hole in the ground. You have to understand, a lot of them couldn’t let the dead go. There were bodies everywhere. And once we started collecting them, we had to get into people’s homes, ask them to give back the body of their loved ones, and they…they wouldn’t let us. Even fought us for it at times. They didn’t want to bury them. Couldn’t.” Podrick seems to have lost the taste for his bread.

“So, you kept them here.” He nods.

“Well, yes and no. We had to _build_ this first. Had to get the stones.”

“Where’d you get them?”

“Dragonstone. We sent the first of our new ships there. Tore down the entire castle for it. Wasn’t easy, because it was practically ancient, but if you aim enough rage at anything…”

“You can break it. -” It seems that truth goes for both sides. “- And the statue?”

“Dragonglass. After the castle was gone, we ferried huge stones from there to here. But that was later. Much later. The skulls were already here at that point.” He gestures at the building behind him.

“This is every one of them? The victims.” Jon asks.

“I think so, yeah. Even Queen Cersei and her brother are amongst them. But I don’t know which ones they are. I think that maybe only Tyrion knows that.”

“Is there any family of yours in there?” He knows by now that Podrick’s last name is Payne, which is a fairly well-known family in Westeros. Still, Jon doesn’t know from which branch he is or who’s left by this point.

“Ah-” Podrick pauses and rakes a hand through his hair. “- A bastard brother, actually. From my mother’s side.”

“Really?” And despite the fact that Jon is no longer a bastard son himself now, the thought still hits him harder than he thought it might.

“Yeah. I…She ran off when I was four, ended up bedded by some singer or something. Lo and behold, nine months later, a son was born.” It sounds like he’s made his peace with the reality of the situation, but Jon can only imagine how much it would’ve hurt.

After all, there were plenty of times when Jon himself had felt abandoned by his mother.

_Turns out that wasn’t quite true._

“Did you know him well?” He asks Pod.

“No. Not at all, actually. When I was in Lord Tyrion’s employ I found out that he lived in King’s Landing. As a baker’s boy. I knew which street he lived on. Knew which house it was, but…just never had the courage to knock on the door and _ask._ The only living relative left to me and I…” He holds up his hands in defeat.

“How’d you find out he was…?” Jon mutters.

“I went to the house after…after everything. Didn’t have to knock then. Just, sift through the rubble. He’d been living there by himself and there he was…but after weeks of decay, there wasn’t’ anything…I don’t even know if we looked alike, in the end.” The young knight closes his eyes.

“I’m sorry. -” He tells Podrick. Before correcting himself: “- I’ll remember him. I’ll remember all of them.”

“Thank you.” Pod replies.

Afterwards, there’s nothing but silence between them. It isn’t uncomfortable. Not in the least. And it gives Jon some time to think. To consider his next step.

“I think I want to go North.” He says eventually.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Last night, I saw Bran. In a dream. And normally I’d think nothing of it but-” But the dream wasn’t just a dream. It felt _real._ It felt substantial.

“But this is different.”

“Exactly.” Jon agrees.

“I’ll go with you.” Podrick nods.

“You will? But you’re part of the Kingsguard.” He can’t help but wonder, because don’t these people have duties to perform.

“It’s not much of a Kingsguard if we’re missing said king, now is it?” Pod gives him a flat stare, which, Jon has to concede that that’s a pretty fair point.

“Right then, North we go.” It feels good to have a purpose again. To have a _reason_ to be here. To have the chance to change things for the better, even now, or no, maybe especially because the Night King is gone.

“To the North!” Podrick laughs, equally elated.

Eventually though, once they’ve finished their bread and Podrick has helped Jon get up from the steps, the giddiness sinks like a rock in a pond, and it does so with just one small, innocuous question.

“So, eh, Jon, do you know _where_ in the North we’re going to go? Because it is a rather large place.”

And that's when Jon has to come to the inevitable conclusion that no, he absolutely doesn’t.

But this will be fine. Right?

Surely?


	6. A Master of Coin

The road back to the Red Keep feels shorter and less intimidating in the light of day. Mostly because the people that were silent, adamant reminders of the terror are now awake and going about their day. They are buying bread, selling goods, laughing with one another, arguing with one another and none of that seems to be hindered by the scars on their bodies or faces.

Life, it seems, has moved on despite the efforts of several tyrants.

Also of note: Almost everyone here seems to know Podrick. And not as some intimidating force of authority either. They know him _as a person._ The people nod at him in the streets. Several girls come up to him for a chat. One man even persistently tries to sell him a particular orange three times over.  They aren’t scared of Podrick. Aren’t scared of what he might represent, and that, more than anything he’s seen so far, convinces Jon that Bran has done an alright job. Despite whatever threats are looming over them, the people trust their Kingsguard to keep them safe.

“Are they always like this?” Jon asks Pod.

“Hm? Who? the girls?” He replies, although his attention seems to be more on peeling that orange.

“The citizens. They seem at ease, even with you here.”

“Oh, that. Well, you know, I used to come here a lot as a squire. So, it’s not like I’m a stranger or anything.” Podrick shrugs.

It was like that at Winterfell, Jon recalls, knights were a part of regular life there. They ate, mingled and spoke with the common folk as casually as everyone else did.

The steps of the Keep are quite busy when they get there, and it’s only here that Jon sees something change in his new friend. Podrick’s shoulders straighten up and seem a lot less lax as they were in the marketplace. His face goes from being friendly and open to, well, perhaps a little less that.

“You don’t like it here.” Jon notes quietly, so that the surrounding guards can’t hear them.

“It’s not that I don’t like it here. -” They come to a standstill in a tiny courtyard. On the floor, someone has drawn a map of the Seven Kingdoms.

It’s damaged, as the rest of the castle is. And it seems that the masons of the keep have not been able to successfully fill the crack that runs through the drawing. It’s visible from the Fingers to just above the Iron Islands.

_Separating North from South._

_How poetic._

_“-_ I love being a knight. I love working with the Lady Commander. I enjoy doing my duties. It’s just…” Podrick continues.

“It’s just…?” he finishes.

“Do you know how when you’re young, you have a lot of respect for some people and you consider them your friend and then once you’ve grown up you realize they weren’t what you believed them to be?” The young knight asks.

“Yeah?” Jon raises his eyebrows.

Lord Tyrion appears from the innards of the castle, walking towards them with a grim look on his face.

“Yeah.” Podrick sighs, eyes fully and only on the Hand of the King.

“Ser Podrick.” Tyrion starts.

“Lord Hand.” He replies.

“I did wonder where you’d gone off too this early in the morning.”  

“Thought I’d show Jon the city. And the House of the Stranger.” Podrick’s gaze is now fixed firmly on a non-existent horizon and his hands are held tightly behind his back.

“The House of the-?” the Imp’s voice takes on a frantic edge. “- Why would you take him there? It’s a dreadful place.”

“Have you ever been?” Jon counters.

“Once. When they opened it. Official business and all that.” He swats at the air, as if the question is a fly he’d rather not deal with.

“I see.” He hums.

“Well, never mind that. There are more important matters to deal with. -” He turns to Podrick once again. “- The Master of Coin did not attend the Small Council meeting just now, and I fear something might be amiss.”

“Has anyone checked the brothels yet?” Podrick huffs.

“Actually…” Tyrion starts.

“You want me to check the brothels.” There’s a note of boredom in his voice, as if he’s both very used to this and very sick of it at the same time.

“Yes.” There’s a small quirk tugging at the Lord Hand’s lip.

 “No. You’ll have to send someone else.” Podrick shoots back.

“But they like _you_ there _._ They don’t like any of the others.” Tyrion whines.

“That’s because you keep sending the ones who try to fondle the girls!”

“Podrick, they’re whores.” He deadpans.

“That doesn’t mean they appreciate that kind of behaviour. Especially not if the men keep refusing to pay them.” The young knight huffs.

“Fine. Fine. The next time I’ll give the men some silver stags when they go.” The longer he looks, the more Jon begins to notice how frazzled Tyrion is. His clothes, while fine at first glance, are crumpled and seem to have been put on rather haphazardly. A few locks of his hair are sticking out at odd ends and the beard is steadily heading towards unkempt.

“Or you could just send the ones who _don’t touch the women._ -” Podrick rolls his eyes. “- Either way, I can’t do it.”

“Why not?”  

“Jon and I need to prepare for our journey to the North.”

“The North? What would you possibly hope to find there?” Tyrion splutters.

 _My family, for one._ Jon thinks, but refrains from starting that discussion.

“The King.” Pod replies bluntly.

“You think Bran might be somewhere out there?”

“Jon dreamt that he was. Besides, it makes sense, doesn’t it? The origin of the Three-Eyed Raven lies there.” He shrugs.

“But…I…Has the Lady Commander really given you permission to go all that way?” The Imp tries.

“She has.” Podrick replies and gives Jon a look which spells that no, she hasn’t, but she will soon enough anyway.

“I suppose I’d best go and find someone else who can track down man holding the keys to the Realm’s coffers then.” Tyrion sighs.

“Well, I just -” Jon starts, glancing at Podrick. “- Maybe we can delay our journey just for a few hours?”

As much as he might want to go North, Jon still wants to talk to the Master of Coin in regards to the funds of rebuilding King’s Landing.

“Really? Alright, fine. I guess we’re going to the brothels then.” Podrick holds up his hands in defeat.

Tyrion nods, some of the tension disappearing from his shoulders. However, once the two of them descend the steps of the Red Keep once more, Jon notices that Podrick is not heading into the city at all. He certainly doesn’t seem to be leading them to a brothel of any kind.

Instead, they head towards a salted scent, and the screeching of gulls is already greeting them as the harbour of King’s Landing drifts into view.

“Wait, where are we going?” Jon mutters, taking in the many, many ships and the crewmembers that are moving goods or equipment across the docks.

 “Cheapest place to find a whore is here. -” Pod sighs, looking over the ships and the people moving amongst them. “- You don’t want to know how many women are shipped here for that purpose alone. A lot are ‘former’ slaves, drifting from one terrible life to the next. Others are running from the Law of the Free Cities. Quite a few left their journey with means, but the ship’s captain just demands more and more along the way. If they don’t pay, they’re thrown overboard. By the time they get here, they’ve no other options left.”

“And you’re not stopping any of that?” Suddenly, he finds himself looking at the hustle and bustle in a different way.

“We try, but it’s hard to keep track off. A lot of them never see the light of day before disappearing off the ships and into the brothels. If we catch the men responsible, they get the noose, but we often don’t.”

Jon thinks of Ros, and wonders why he never asked her _why_ she did what she did. Was it of her own volition, or was she driven into it involuntarily?

He regrets not trying to find out.

“But hey, you don’t have to pay a captain as much as a brothel owner, and our Master of Coin is nothing if not cheap.” Pod grumbles and sets his eyes on a few important looking men standing next to one of the bigger ships.

Here, Jon notes, the atmosphere is not like it was at the marketsquare. The burly men of the docks don’t look at Podrick amicably. Instead, he is met with suspicion and apprehension, and there’s not a doubt in Jon’s mind that they’ve had to deal with his inspections before.

First, he asks them about the Master of Coin. No-one has seen him anywhere. Then, he asks them about the girls. They claim they’ve never had girls on board. He asks them what they _are_ going to get from Essos, then. They say its spices or silks or wines and, oh, they must be leaving soon. Finally, Podrick informs them that they’ll need a permit before they can set off and import goods for the Six Kingdoms. A permit only the Master of Coin can grant them, so, if they want to leave, they’d best find him first.

His claims are met with riotous complains, but Podrick just calmly repeats his words until they droop off back to their respective ships.

“Do you really think these men know where he is?” Jon asks.

“No. They would’ve raced to the nearest whoremongering captain and dragged him to his office if they did.” Pod muses.

“So, he must be in town after all, then.”

“Looks like, I suppose-” He starts, but doesn’t get much further than that, because there’s a familiar voice echoing through the crowds.

“Prince Quentyn! We’ve been over this!” Ser Davos sounds exasperated.

“No. It’s unacceptable. You cannot _keep_ me here. I am not your prisoner! I am leading one of _the kingdoms._ ” There’s a Dornish man, dressed in yellow, snapping back at him.

“Trust me. We are very much aware of that. We know what you mean to us and to our King, but we need to have a ratification from the Lord Hand before you set off to the North with seven galleons.” He tries.

“Why? Because you think I’ll start a war with the queen?” The prince bristles.

“Of course I don’t think that. I know you two regard each other warmly.” Something softens in Davos’s tone.

“Lord Davos, don’t get me wrong, I respect you for bringing Ellaria back to us, and I believe you when you say you think highly of me, but the Hand of the King doesn’t much care about that, now does he? Arrange me a meeting with the King himself before the day has ended. If you don’t, I’ll sail with or without permission.” And with that final statement, he stalks off.

“That looked like fun.” Jon deadpans as he walks towards Ser Davos. Podrick might be following or he might not be. It doesn’t really matter.

“Oh, a barrel of laughs, that one. Not that I can blame him. We’ve been keeping him and his ships here for a week now without giving him a good reason.” He gives Jon a wry smile in return.

“Because he might start a war with Sansa.” It feels incredibly odd to say those words, even when he understands that that’s the reality he lives in now.

“That’s what he believes, but no, it’s the opposite really. Our Lord Hand worries that if we let him go North he’ll get too close to your cousin, and that those ideas of a Northern Independence might lead to notions of a Southern Independence.” Davos shakes his head.  

“Would that really be so bad?” Jon asks, staring at the water that flows at the side of the docks, marvelling at the clarity of it. He’d seen the sea at White Harbour a few times, and it’d always been murky and tempestuous. But here, it’s clear enough to see the fish swimming around in it and the bottom below it.

“Not if you ask me. There’s not much benefit in keeping a kingdom that doesn’t want to be kept, so to speak, but both King Bran and Tyrion have nixed the idea. I’m not really sure why.” He shrugs.

“So, you’ll let him go, when he doesn’t get his meeting with the King?” Because, well, that’s _obviously_ not going to happen.

“Aye, unless Tyrion comes up with a better plan. -” And given the state of things, Jon doubts that he will. “- but what are you doing all the way out here, laddie?”

“We’re looking for the Master of Coin.”

“Bronn? Save your troubles, he’s probably drunk in the corner of a brothel.” Davos snorts.

“I know, but I’d like to talk to him about the funds for rebuilding the city. Seems they’ve not been distributing them properly amongst the smallfolk.” He notes, and something on Davos’s face changes. He’s looking at Jon as if he’s looking at a stranger. Like he’s not quite sure that he’s seeing this right.

“What?” Jon blurts out.

“Nothing. It’s…nothing. Just…it’s been a while since I’ve seen you do this. I’d forgotten you could be like this.”

“Like this?” He furrows his brow.

“I’d never noticed it before, but after you’d come back to us. After what Melisandre did, you sort of…lost touch with the little people, I think. Before you died, you insisted that the Free Folk should not have to fight in a war that isn’t theirs, and then, afterwards…No, never you mind.” Davos mutters.

“I think I must’ve.” He agrees, because clearly, the Jon that did all that he’s seen cannot have been that concerned about the larger consequences of his actions.

“Hm, it doesn’t matter anymore, I suppose. Not with the way things are now. I know some people think you’re just the same as your other self but you’re not, are you? You really are the bits and parts that fell off along the way.” He rubs his hand over his chin.

“I hope it’s the good bits, then. -” Jon tries for a small smile. “- Podrick and I will be heading North soon. We think Bran might be somewhere out there.”

“Good. Tell Samwell I said hello when you see him.”

“Sam? He’s up North?” Suddenly, it’s not so difficult to smile.

“Aye. It was safer that way. There were a lot of rising tensions with the cultists, and it was better for him and the family to get out of here for a little while.”

“I’ll…I’ll be sure to send him your regards. -” There’s something like hope bubbling up in his stomach. “- But don’t any of you have families?”

“The rest of the Small Council? No, we don’t. Well, Bronn has a wife. A Stokeworth girl. There was some hassle about the betrothal, but ultimately, I don’t think he cares enough about her to stay with her at Highgarden.”

“Which is why we’re going to have to look for him at the brothels.” Podrick pipes up.

“Good luck to you boys then. If you find that dog tell him he owes me three gold dragons.” Ser Davos harrumps, clapping him on the back even as Jon is dragged away by Pod.

It’s only a short walk from the harbours to the district that holds most of the whorehouses in the city. Probably with reason. Either way, the reaction here is different still from the one they received at the Market Square and the Docks. Or rather, it’s more mixed. The men, both merchant and patron treat them with an even greater suspicion then the captains at the docks, but their reaction doesn’t weigh up against that of the women.

The moment they see Podrick, there’s waves and winks, kisses thrown his way and lewd gestures galore. A few of them call him by name, shouting at him that he looks good. One of them even asks who Jon is, and if he’s got some time to spare later. Podrick just laughs and graciously tells them no.

“Is this…is this normal?”

“They don’t mean it. -” Pod replies. “- It’s their way of shielding themselves. They _have_ to sell their bodies, so they might as well be forward about it to prevent the men from doing it first.”

“And they know you so well, because Tyrion keeps sending you to them.”

“Oh, yeah.”

However, once they’ve turned a corner or two, the mood shifts abruptly. There are no whores calling to them, no brothel owners staring at them, and even their patrons seem to have averted their eyes from the ‘wares’.

Instead, they’re all focussed on a tall knight clad in gold.

But not the one Jon’s travelling with.

“No-one goes in or out without permission. Make sure we know where everyone was and what they’ve seen.” Ser Brienne barks at the soldiers around her.

“My Lady Commander.” Podrick calls out, speeding towards her.

“Oh, good. You’re here. -” She glances at the two of them. “- Wait, what _are_ you doing here?”

“Looking for the Master of Coin.” Jon tells her.

“Ah. I see.” She grabs one of the soldiers and gently shoves him in an eastern direction.

“What about you, my lady? What happened here?” Podrick asks.

“Murder. Same as the others. -” There’s a clipped note in her voice, as if she cannot reveal more than that. “- I want you to go inside. Inspect the body. Prepare it for when the Silent Sisters arrive.”

“Consider it done.” He nods.

The chaos inside the narrow building they’re sent to is, if possible, even bigger. There are crying women and men shouting at indifferent soldiers. There’s a heavy smell of sex and incense and smoked ham, for some reason.

They’re led up two staircases and down several corridors before finally arriving at the scene of the crime.

It’s…

“Oh, no.” Podrick mutters, staring at the horror before them, while Jon’s stomach starts to protest violently.

Their victim is hung on the wall, nailed to it like a painting. Heavy spikes are driven through the arms and legs, blood dripping down the same cream colour that adorns Jon’s chambers.

The body itself is an even bigger tragedy. There are barely any clothes to speak of, and the skin seems to have been cut off on some places, while in other spots it looks as if its been mangled by a branding iron. And with that, Jon comes to the morbid conclusion that there was no smoked ham to speak of.

The face is a mess too, teeth have been knocked out of the mouth, lying haphazardly on the floor. There are cuts on the cheek, and the ears have been sliced off, but he’s got no idea where they might’ve gone to.

Probably to the same place as where half the fingers are hidden.

“I suppose it was always going to end this way.” Pod sighs, and with a shock, Jon realizes that he knows the victim.

“Who is this?” He asks.

“Well Jon, let me introduce you to our Master of Coin.” He roughly sweeps his hand towards the corpse.

“How did this...?” Jon asks, staring at the man he’s spent the better part of a day looking for.

“Same cuts. Same wounds. We’ve seen this before. These were cultists, alright. -” He shakes his head. “- But why didn’t anyone notice? This place is filled with people in every nook and cranny.”

 “Poison, maybe? Or perhaps he was so deep in his cups that he didn’t have it in him to scream by the time they started?” Jon picks up one of the goblets lying nearby.

“It’s not unlikely, I suppose.”

“So, this is why Sam left? Because he was afraid of this?” The idea that this might’ve been his friend in any other circumstances wrings at his heart.

“They’ve been targeting the Small Council members for a while now. Ever since they realized that they can’t have the King.” Pod grouses.

“Next best thing.” Jon finishes for him, but Podrick has already moved on to the next order of business.

“You can get him down, boys. Take out the nails and see if there’s any of his worldly possessions lying around the place. -” That one’s aimed at the soldiers guarding the door. “- I suppose we’d best go and make sure Lollys Stokeworth knows she’s ruling Highgarden now.”

There’s not much left to do once the order’s been given, and Jon gets a sneaky suspicion that Ser Brienne only sent them up here to show them who the victim was, without having to tell them outright. Which he appreciates, but not as much as he appreciates the fresh air when he finally steps out onto the streets again.

Podrick immediately starts a conversation with his commander, but Jon doesn’t really have it in him to listen to it. He’s still trying to swallow down his nausea. Tries to drown it in the sights and the sounds of King’s Landing. The gossiping whores, the angry patrons, the noise of their arguments, the stamping of boots on the yellowish bricks of the pavement. The red of the…

_Red?_

_That’s not supposed to be there._

Thick droplets of blood spattered across the pavement. They form a neat path, starting a few feet away from the door. Some still glistening between the dusty stones, some already smeared by footsteps.

He lets his eyes follow them, lets them lead him until they disappear into a crowd at the left of the brothel. The faces of the people there are mostly unremarkable and they all seem fixed on the chaos in front them.

All except one.

In any other situation, Jon wouldn’t have noticed the man at all. He seems completely ordinary. Doesn’t look poor or particularly rich. There are no red robes on him, he’s dressed in a simple green, and his blond hair and blue eyes makes him look as though he’s from the Westerlands, or maybe the Riverlands.

But the look on his face…

He’s not at all interested in the happenings at the brothel. He seems almost bored, if a little pleased. Furthermore, he’s the only one who’s noticed Jon staring at him. Their eyes lock for the briefest of seconds, and just like that, the stranger abruptly turns around and slips away.

“Hey!-” Jon shouts, because this can’t be a coincidence. “- Hey! Stop!”

It takes a lot of effort to push through the crowd, but Jon is not interested in being careful. He’s seen the face of the murderer, and he’s not about to let him walk away. He makes onto the other side just in time to see the culprit turn a corner.

“Stop that man!” He yells, and sets off into a sprint.

The streets of King’s Landing are wholly unknown to Jon, and if he’s ever had to chase anything, it was through forests and fields of ice. There, he knew how to manoeuvre, here, he smashes into almost every corner and every passer-by.

The murderer doesn’t seem to have any qualms about staying on the going path either, he pushes through doorways and into other people’s homes with no regard for the occupants.

“Sorry.” Jon mutters haphazardly when he suddenly finds himself in someone else’s kitchen. He doesn’t see the owner, doesn’t notice their response, all he notices is that his prey is climbing up a small wall to end up back on the street.

Perhaps it’s a good thing he’s not wearing armour, because it certainly aids his speed, but maybe it’s also his undoing, because in his haste, he promptly ends up slamming into a cart. The world turns upside down, his back hits a sack of grain, and his cheek crashes painfully into the pavement.

Jon blinks.

Has to shake his head in order to find his sense of clarity. However, by the time he does, the stranger seems to have disappeared into one of the numerous alleys that surround him.

“Fuck.” He growls, trying to find a trace of the man anywhere and everywhere. There must be more blood, or footsteps, or _something_.

One of these alleys holds the answer, and he’ll scour through them all if he has to. Eventually though, there’s no choice but to pick one at random, hoping it’ll hold the answer he’s looking for.

_Go on, then. Red God, show me you really want me to do your bidding and make me be right._

And no sooner as he’s thought it, an arm slips around his neck from behind and _squeezes_.  His air is cut off and his arms try to wildly sway at his assailant. A kick lands at the back of his knees, forcing him onto the ground.  

There are stars behind his eyes, even as he futilely tries to call for help. And then, a voice in his ear.

“Se zaldrīzes kessa gūrogon jeme.” There’s a Westerosi accent to the words, but that’s all Jon can discern from it.

His arms are still flailing wildly, but the coordination is off, which means he hits his own hip more often than not. Hands scrambling against a belt with the clasp and…oh, there’s something there.

A dagger, more specifically.

One that everyone had neglected to take from him ever since he got it from the remains of a red priestess.

One that he’d strapped on his person this morning, as a _just in case_ and a _don’t know what to do with otherwise._

One that is so much lighter than Longclaw that he’d promptly forgotten about it altogether.

His unsteady fingers manage to unsheathe the weapon just before the black spots behind his eyes consume him completely, and with a feeble swing, he tries to hit his attacker wherever he can.

It’s enough.

With a wild push, Jon is thrown out of his grip and back onto the cobblestones. He coughs, scrambles for a second and then finally turns around.

The blade of his dagger is stuck in his assailants’ neck and the man is already wordlessly collapsing against the wall behind him, gurgling and choking on his own blood.

“Thanks for nothing, you absolute arsehole.” Jon hoarsely whispers at the Red God and silently vows to never ask a deity for anything ever again.

After that, he closes his eyes and settles back against the wall opposite to the one his opponent has died against. Wishing now, more than ever, to be on his way to the North. To his home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Valyrian translations in this chapter:
> 
> “The dragon will take you all.”


	7. A Road Home

This place is unnerving. Perhaps even more so than the undercroft they found him in. Although, in the broadest sense of the word, Jon supposes there’s not much of a difference to it.

It’s dark here, just as it was there.

There’s a priestess by their side, this one wearing grey, rather than red.

They’re probably pretty far under the ground as well.

But still, instead of the cloying heat and smoke, the air here feels cold and there’s a stale scent of death hanging around the old stones that make up the walls and the floors. If he didn’t know any better, Jon would call this a crypt.

It’s not, though, if only because here, the living still linger by the side of the dead.

“Thank you.” He whispers when the Silent Sister who had brought them here makes her departure. She gives him a nod, that much he can tell, but he can’t see enough of her face to discern any other emotion.

Is she at ease with the corpses laid bare on the slabs of stone in front of them, or is this still odd to her as well?

“Gods, this is a disaster.” Tyrion is standing in the corner, staring at Lord Bronn’s body and pouring himself another goblet of wine. Jon has no idea where he even got the wine, or how he can bring himself to drink it here. But it is what it is.

“Why, because you’ll miss him so?” Benerro snidely asks him. His attention is elsewhere, though. He’s placed his hand on the forehead of the other body laid out next to Bronn’s.

Jon’s assailant.

The Priest’s gaze is fully on the young man. Staring at him with an intensity that is hard to discern. Is this some sort of ritual? Or is he simply trying to find some shred of evidence on what happened in that brothel.

“No, of course not. Well, maybe a bit I suppose, but now we’re lacking a Master of Coin alongside a Master of Laws, a Master of Whisperers and a Master of Wars.” The Imp whines.

“I thought you people might’ve had enough of war by now? -” He raises an eyebrow. “- Besides I’m not really sure what good a Master of Whisperers will do when you have a king such as yours.”

“He’s your king too nowadays. -” Tyrion corrects. “- but fair. Point taken. Still, I think we can all agree that a Master of Coin is rather vital to the Kingdoms.”

The Red Priest merely hums at that.

“Would you like the position?” He continues.

“Me? You want me to be your Master of Coin?” Benerro snorts.

“Sure, why not? Can’t think of anyone better at the moment.” Tyrion sighs.

You are aware that I swore a vow of poverty and that I have renounced all forms of wealth under the watchful eye of my God?” He deadpans.

“Right, you would just spend all our gold to build temples.”

“Remind me again; do you Westerosi find that more or less acceptable than spending it all on brothels?”

“How about we spend it on building _homes_ instead?” Jon huffs. The Master of Coin might be dead, but his mission certainly isn’t.

“What do you mean?” Tyrion blinks.

“The rebuilding funds. We haven’t exactly paid up what we promised.” Podrick replies.

“I might not be suitable for the position, but if you were to make me Master of Coin, I’d say that it would be a good choice to spend the gold on that.” Benerro looks at the Imp.

The room falls silent after that, and one by one, the eyes of everyone seem to land on the body of Bronn. Jon supposes that, somewhere in the back of their minds, they’re still expecting him to complain.

He doesn’t.

“Yes, well -” Tyrion coughs. “- Benerro, you don’t want to be Master of Coin, but mayhaps we can…share the burden for a while? So, we can clear those funds a little faster?”

“I suppose we could.” Benerro shrugs.

“Right, now that we’ve taken care of the most pressing matter, can we get back to the part where a member of the Small Council was murdered in broad daylight?” The Lady Commander doesn’t seem to care much for the man himself, but she is evidently keen on avoiding a repeat performance.

“We obviously know the victim. We’re obviously aware of how he met his end and thanks to Lord Snow here, we know _who_ did the deed and given the method of execution, we’re all well aware of the why as well. I’m not sure what else you might want to look into?” Tyrion sighs and rubs his forehead.

“Really, you know _who_ this is? Because when I first saw the body, I had no clue.” Ser Brienne points at the body.

“He looks like a local.” The Lord Hand tells her.

“He may look like one, but as I told the Lady Commander when she found me, he wasn’t speaking in the common tongue when we fought.” Jon crosses his arms over his chest.

“What did he say?” Benerro asks.

“Seh Zaaldrees…kessa..gurogron jaime?”

The High Priest visibly winces at Jon’s mangled pronunciation.

“Or maybe it was more like See Zahl-”

“Alright! Thank you! -” He interrupts. “- I understood it the first time you tried, no need to butcher the language any further.”

“What does it mean?” Podrick looks between the two of them.

“The Dragon will take you all.” Benerro walks away from the body, suddenly done with it.

“That was rather predictable.” Tyrion is pouring more wine in his goblet.

“It would be, if this man spoke a word of Valyrian. Which he didn’t.” Podrick again.

“Then what? Did someone tell him to say it?”

“No. The only people who knew Valyrian in that brothel were two whores, none of whom had ever seen him before he died. We have several other eyewitnesses who can confirm that he was nowhere near the place until he killed Bronn.” Ser Brienne replies.

“He must’ve known the sentence before uttering it.” Tyrion eyes are gliding over the stranger’s face, trying to discern…something.

“Who is he?” Jon asks in the meantime.

“His name is Joris Oren. He’s from the Crownlands and owns three lucrative ships carrying spices from Essos to Westeros. About a year ago he finally decided to go and see how his business was run overseas. I’ve been told by several of his travelling companions that he would frequently get scammed out of his money there, simply because he did not speak the language and refused to learn it. Thought it was beneath him.” Podrick tells them.

“And yet, he spoke it fluently today.” He mutters, even as Tyrion takes another large gulp of wine.

“That he did.”

“So, we have a man who is not from Essos, who has only once _been_ to Essos, who was dismissive to its cultures and languages, and who therefore isn’t likely to have sought out a red priest, let alone join a radical cult.” Tyrion again.

“Think this might be something we ought to look into, Lord Hand?” The Lady Commander deadpans.

“Fine. I’ll admit it. I was wrong.-” He holds up his hands in defeat. “-What about the man’s family? we should probably know more about them if we want to find out what’s been going on with Joris here. Podrick, perhaps in the morning you could…ah, no. You can’t, can you?”

“Indeed, he can’t.” Ser Brienne answers before anyone can get a word in edgewise.

“We’re heading to the North at the break of dawn.” Jon adds, because while he is intrigued by the murder, this has gone on for long enough now. The whoring Master of Coin is gone and in its place are two men who will consider the people’s needs, even if it’s only out of guilt or piety.

“The best chance we have of sorting out this mess with the cultists is to find the king before they do. He’ll know how to deal with this, I’m sure of it.” Podrick answers.

“I agree, -”Benerro nods. “- R’Hollr gave us Lord Snow, it’s up to us to send him the right direction.”

“And the longer Jon stays in King’s Landing, the more likely it is he’ll become a target to the dragon cult. Once they know _he’s_ what their priestess brought back…” Ser Brienne adds.

“Well I suppose you boys had best make it an early night then.” There’s an underlying bitterness in Tyrion’s voice, but Jon can’t really bring himself to care much.

Instead, his feet start to follow Podrick out of the cold, cavernous chambers. His eyes, though, they linger on the dead Master of Coin. A sight that shocked him at first and one that will haunt him once he’s finally drifted off in a restless sort of sleep later.

In his dream, he’s wandering around the House of the Stranger, just as he had this morning, staring at the skulls that almost feel like a crowd. Not living maybe, but present and sentient all the same.

 However, this time when he reaches the centre, there is no dragonglass statue. No hunched over figure standing with his back towards him.

Instead,  the Master of Coin sits there behind a large oaken desk, looking exactly as he had when Jon and Podrick had first found him: The face is damaged, the tunic is covered in blood, there are nails sticking out of his arms and legs and he’s missing a few fingers and an ear.

But he’s not a motionless corpse this time. No, instead, he is acting a lot like how Jon imagines he might’ve acted in life. Leafing through a big book on his desk and counting out several coins with his left hand.

And those coins don’t exactly look familiar either. They’re not gold, or silver, or even copper. No, these are made of ivory.

_Of bones._

“What are you doing here?” He finds himself asking the man.

“Who, me? I’m just trying to sort out some debts.” The Master of Coin replies, sounding exactly like Joris Oren did.

“Debts?”

“Yeah, debts. Everyone here has them.” He waves his hand vaguely around the room, and it’s only then that Jon realizes that he’s missed something.

Something rather important.

On either side of the long desk, at the very edges of it, stand two women, one on the left and one on the right.

The left one is wearing black robes and has a face marred by scars. The other looks mostly pristine in her flowing red dress, but there are little clouds of dust crumbling off her skin.

The unknown, unsilent sister his other self had saved and the red priestess who had saved him at the cost of her own life.

One damaged by a horrendous fire he could not stop, and the other damned because she unwittingly sought out his dragon blood.

“So, how much are they supposed to pay then?” Jon asks, staring at the women still.

“Not that much, actually. The ones on the walls have already paid their dues. So has she. -” He points at the Red Priestess. “- I’m currently in the process of resolving my own debts as we speak.”

The master holds up one of the ivory coins as if to demonstrate his actions, but then his attention drifts to the unsilent sister.

“This one, well, she’s been given a life for now, but we’re quite sure she’ll be able to return it in a few decades or so.”

“A-a life…” Jon stutters.

The Master of Coin, however, continues as if Jon had never spoken in the first place.

“But you, though. You’ve just been raking ‘em up, haven’t you? They gave you one life and you _blew it._ Abandoned your duties and your vows. Fucking hell, it got to the point where your own men felt the need to off you.”

“That wasn’t-” He starts, but to no avail.

“So, they gave you another one. That’s an exceptional loan, you know? They don’t just hand them out like that. But what do you do with it? You get all these lovely people here killed. Destroyed. Gone in an instance just like that. And now they’ve given you a third chance?  A third life, when none of us here ever got to properly finish our first. That’s gonna cost you, boy.-”

“It’s not…I’m going to…” he shudders at the thought.

“- Just imagine the debt on that.” The master of coin says, but his voice sounds hollow and far away.

Then, suddenly, Jon hears a heavy slam and feels a cold wind rushing him by. When he turns around, he can see that the large doors of the House of the Stranger have blown wide open and there’s a snowstorm whirling outside.

Almost on instinct, Jon sprints forward to shut the doors and keep the blizzard out. However, once he finally makes it to them, the weather seems to have turned completely. Instead of a storm, he’s staring at a pristine white field of snow. Or no, not entirely pristine, a small set of footprints are pressed into it. Starting at the threshold of the House and leading onwards to the great, big mountain that’s looming on the horizon.

Mesmerized, Jon finds himself stepping outside into the cold. He pulls the doors closed behind him, but before final gap has been pressed shut, he can hear a whisper in the distance.

“ _Imagine the debt on that._ ”

With a shock, he bolts upright in the bed. Breathing heavily trying to find his bearings. The blanket he’d had last night seems to have fallen off the bed, and his pillow is lying haphazardly at his foot.

It’s not sunrise yet, not by a longshot, but same as yesterday, Jon simply cannot bring himself to fall asleep. Not when the image of the Master of Coin is still so vividly stuck in his head. Instead, he makes do by preparing for the journey he’s got ahead of him.

Of course, most of it he packed before going to sleep. He’s got some bread and cheese, as well as a few strips of dried meat. Aside from that, he’s also gotten several shirts and two pairs of pants already stuffed in the pack. There’s more, of course, but none of that stands out as much as his new sword does. It’s a little smaller than Longclaw, but it very obviously isn’t made of Valyrian Steel, because it feels heavier and clumsier than his own sword ever did.

_Gods only know where that blade is now._

He sighs. Oh well, at least he still has the dagger. He can fight with that if needs be, but to be honest, it was never exactly his greatest strength.

The leather armour they gave him is perfectly suitable, even if it is made with the southern styles in mind. But then again, they were kind enough to give him a grey cloak and scarf, so they must be aware that he’s heading into a colder environment.

It’ll come in handy, winter or no winter, that’s for sure.

Once he’s packed everything, has checked, double checked and triple checked to make sure that what he needs is truly there, Jon nods, more to himself than anyone else.

_Time to go._

Sure, he’s too early by few hours or so, but the city feels like a trap, both too large and too small at the same time. No, it’s probably better to go to the point where they agreed to meet, just outside the Northern Gate.

Getting from the Red Keep all the way to that particular gate involves a quite sizeable walk, along which he passes the House of the Stranger. It looks less imposing now than it did in his dream, and he can’t quite resist the urge to peek inside, just for a spell.

There’s no desk, no Master of Coin and no dead women. Instead, there’s the Dragonglass statue. Odd how the Stranger suddenly seems a more comfortable shape of death. What he sees here is natural and real, what he saw during the night was…well, it’s hard to put into words how strange and frightening the images were.

And with that thought still vividly in mind, Jon reaches the gate. He’d always been told that the Dragon Gate was quite an imposing sight to behold, but that, ironically, was one of the first things to be destroyed when the actual dragon arrived.

Now it’s just a wooden palisade with an impressively complex gate built into it.

He can tell that there are masons at work here during the day, and that, presumably, eventually, the wood will make way for stone once more.

For now, though, the wood will have to do. Of course,  no-one seems to stop him as he passes through. Either because they know he used to be Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, or because they don’t much care for people who leave the city, as opposed to those who enter it.

 And so, he ends up sitting at the side of the King’s Road, staring at the almost endless grassy plains that sit up against the city’s walls, watching as the early travellers and merchants come by.

Mostly, they’re just people. Alive and vibrant and ready to get to their destinations. It seems that they, like Jon, are eager to leave the chaos of King’s Landing behind them.

There’s one cart that catches his attention, though. There’s about three men tending to it. Probably belongs to a family as a whole, because there’s a woman too, and five children.

No, not five _. Six._

At the back of the cart, there’s a young boy, playing with a wooden figurine. Jon can’t tell what it is in the dim light of the first shy rays of sunlight, but the child can’t be more than four years old and seems wholly unconcerned about lagging behind.

“Hey!-” one of the men calls out. “- Where’s…ah! There you are.”

His big, meaty hands come up to lift the boy and set him on the cart, even as his voice begins to gently reprimand him for wandering off.

“Son, you really can’t keep straying like that, or we’ll end up losing you along the way. Gotta stay with the family, alright?”

“’M sorry.” The boy yawns, while the man ruffles the brown curls on his head.

There’s something familiar about it, Jon decides. Something that has him thinking back on his own father.

His _real_ father. The one who raised him and cared for him for as long as he can recall.

Ned Stark.

Not that Targaryen Prince.

He still doesn’t really know what to think about it. After all, just about the only thing he knows about Rhaegar as a father is that he may or may not have kidnapped Jon’s mother and that he left his own children to die in the Red Keep.

Which isn’t exactly what you’d call a great example to live by.

Moreover, he doesn’t want _that_ to be his example. Doesn’t want to have anything to do with that accursed family at all.

It’s a twisted kind of gift, the knowledge of his inheritance. He had always wanted to know who his mother was, had always wanted to belong to the Stark Family in full, had dreamt about a day where he might be able to cast off the name Snow.

All three of those things are now true, but it’s poisoned, it’s all wrong now. He knows who his mother is, but she’s well and truly dead. He belongs to the family he’d always wanted to belong to, but also to one of the most revolting and dangerous houses to have ever graced the Realm. He can cast off the name Snow, but only to bear the name Targaryen, not Stark.

His thoughts on what to do now have all but stalled on the fact that it is better to be a bastard than it is to be mad conqueror. Which means he should stay Jon Snow. Which means he’ll have to do what he’s always done: Carve his own path instead of neatly slotting into that of an actual heir.

With a sigh, he gets up, and wipes the dust from his hands, because he recognizes the next two people who have come wandering out through the city Gate.

“Davos. Podrick.” He greets while approaching them.

“’Morning.” Ser Davos nods. There are five soldiers standing behind and around him. No doubt trying to keep the remainder of the Small Council safe. Although, that one in the back might just be here to guide the horses.

“Were you out here long already?” Pod asks, and Jon notes that the golden Kingsguard armour has made way for something that’s more suitable for the road. An armour seems equal in shape, but is made of a much darker metal, giving the impression that he’s a travelling knight instead of one that belongs in the Keep.  

“I…yes. Another strange dream.” Jon reluctantly admits.

“About the king?”

“No. Not so much, I don’t think. Nothing new, anyway. About the Master of Coin, actually. He kept telling me about how high my debts were.”

“That’s rich coming from a man who never paid off his own.” Davos snorts, and Jon can’t help but crack a smile at that as well.

“Tell me, though. What is the Master of Ships doing out here so early?”

“Apologizing to you, for letting the only seven ships heading North sail before you were ready to leave.” He huffs.

“On horseback is fine too.” Jon’s not really sure how comfortable he’d feel about spending weeks at sea anyway.

“Right, well, then I’m just here to bid you farewell again. At least this time’s better than last.” He claps Jon on his shoulder and gives Podrick a nod as he takes the horses towards them.

“I imagine that it must be.” What with him not being _exiled_ this time around.

“Certainly. I have faith that if anyone can find our King it’ll be the two of you.” He looks at Jon and Podrick.

“Don’t you worry about that, old man. Just hold down the fort while we’re gone, yeah?” Pod replies amicably.

“Of course I will. What do you think I’ve got these boys for?” He points at the soldiers behind him.

“We’ll see you when we’ve found Bran.” Jon tells him as he gets up on his saddle, before giving him a final handshake from horseback.

After that, his eyes are on nothing but the open road that lies ahead of them. Now, Jon has never really been this far south before, but finding the way home shouldn’t be hard. Not from this point onwards. He only has to make sure he keeps up with the rest of his family and doesn’t stray from the path they laid out for them.


	8. A Way Forward

All in all, Jon thinks that the first week of their journey along the King’s Road has gone quite splendid indeed. The fresh air of the countryside is a pleasant change of pace from the smells and the sounds of King’s Landing, and living out in the rough is a lot closer to what he knows than the big city was.

However, much more important is that there haven’t been any strange dreams as of late. In fact, once his head hits the pillow (or the saddlebag that is serving the purpose of one) he sleeps like the dead. Maybe even better than the dead, given that Jon’s gotten intimately acquainted with what the dead _can_ do whilst sleepwalking.

But so far.

Nothing.

They’ve simply been keeping up the pace, passing the many carts and travellers that are following the same route as they are. And with a little luck, they should be well past Harrenhal when the sun sets.

The days, Jon has noticed, are longer now than the ones he remembers. Reminding him once more that this is not the world he left behind. Not by a long shot.

“I’m thinking lunch.” Podrick says, staring at a particular spot just off the road.

“Hmm.” Jon hums, because he’s not opposed to the idea per se, but he’s also not entirely sure that they shouldn’t just keep moving.

“Come on, I know you’re hungry. Plus, we still have the flatbread we got for fixing that wheel yesterday. If we don’t eat it today, it’ll be stale tomorrow.” It’s quite a different way to travel, alongside Podrick, he has to admit that.

With the brothers, or with the wildlings for that matter, it was always very much to the point. There were no interruptions, no waiting around and definitely no lunches. Everyone kept marching to the point of exhaustion and then did the same thing again in the morning.

Podrick, empathically, is nothing like that.

He happily chats to people on the road. Stops to help those who might need a hand and has no qualms about ending late in the afternoon instead of well after sunset.

 _And yet,_ despite that, they’ve been travelling at a significant speed, simply because they’re not tired, hungry or fighting all the time.

Now, Jon knows that Podrick was once a squire to the Imp and the Lady Commander, which means that he was, to some degree, responsible for their well-being. So, he probably picked up some tricks of the trade here and there.But Seven Hells, he must’ve been an exceptional squire, with the way he’s got everything planned out and on hand.

“I suppose I could do with some lunch.” Jon admits.

“That’s right. Lunch!”

And just like that, they find themselves sitting in a cheerfully green field barely off the King’s Road. There’s a small stream gently splashing and gurgling somewhere behind them and the cawing of a raven nearby, but other than that, it’s quiet.

He ties up his horse and takes Pod’s along with it, but manages to turn around just in time to watch his friend take off his sword-belt and put the weapon to the side. He’s seen the motion several times now, and every time Jon keeps feeling like there’s something _off_ about it, like the blade is lighter than it ought to be, though he could never quite figure out why.

Not until now.

“Your sword. -” He asks, while splitting the flatbread. “- Where did you get it?”

“From Ser Brienne. She gave it to me when I became a knight.” Which, that makes sense, he’d seen the same sort of ostentatious handle hanging from her belt too.

“It’s Valyrian, isn’t it?”

“I was wondering when you’d ask. -” Podrick guffaws, picking up the weapon and unsheathing it, showing Jon that, yes, it’s most definitely Valyrian. “It belonged to Jaime Lannister previously. And before that, it belonged to your father. Or your uncle. Ned Stark, in any case.”

“Ice…” Jon whispers, trying to remember what the blade used to look like way back when.

“Yes.” Pod replies softly.

“It used to be much bigger.”

“Lord Tywin had it molten down after your…after Ned Stark’s execution. I should’ve…If you want it, it’s yours. You’ve got a better claim to it than I do.” He holds it out to Jon.

“No. Don’t. What happened to it is history now. I can’t change that any more than I can change anything else that has happened. If the Lady Commander gave it to you, you’ve earned it.” He waves at Pod to take the sword back.

“Alright. If you’re sure.” The weapon is placed back into the sheath.

“It’s just…” Jon starts.

“It’s just what…?” Podrick looks up at him again.

“What’s its name? The sword I mean.”

“Oh. Uh. We named it Honour-bound. Ser Brienne and I. It used to have a dreadful name, you see. _Widow’s Wail._ But that…that seemed wrong when we found Ser Jaime’s body. Because there was no widow to speak of. He died alongside his queen, was with her until the very end. Honour-bound by his duty to her.” He stares into the distance, and Jon knows that he must be seeing the image of them behind his eyes.

“A fitting name, then. Even if it’s for someone like the Kingslayer.” Jon tries.

“Jaime Lannister hurt a lot of kind people a great deal, and he wasn’t a good man by any measure, but he knew where his loyalties lay, at the end of it all.” Podrick utters.  
  
“You’ll do right by it. I’m sure.” Jon tells him, because if there’s one thing he’s learned so far, it’s that Podrick is a virtuous man.

“I hope so.”

The conversation drifts onto easier topics after that, and they amicably share the bread between them. Everything proceeds as one might expect it to, right up until the point where Podrick’s wiped the last of the crumbs from his hands and has taken out a satchel of dried fruits.

Then, something large and black comes swooping out from the sky, landing directly _on top_ of Pod without a warning or a sound.

Jon nearly falls over in shock. Podrick, to his credit, only loses his balance for a brief second. After which he happily resumes as if nothing has happened.

Or no, not as if nothing has happened. As if something like this happens every day.

“I knew you’d show up for these.” He tells the large black bird sitting on top of his head, before taking out a dried peach from his satchel.

The raven just caws at him, eyes as white as Ghost’s fur is.

“I know, I know, you like dates better. But I just have the peaches now, alright. This isn’t King’s Landing.”

The raven cocks its head to the side and stares.

“If you poop on my head again, I swear to the Seven that I will spit in your soup the next time I serve it to you.” He snorts, but holds up the peach regardless. The raven takes it from him with its beak.

This peculiar exchange repeats itself a few times before Jon finally has the wits to ask him about it.

“Podrick.” He blurts out.

“Yeah?”

“Is that Bran up there on your head?”

It takes the young knight a second to answer that question.

“Well, it is and it isn’t, I think. We’re not really sure how much of Bran is really in there. Enough to mostly understand what we’re saying, but not enough to avoid the…uh…occasional accident. Ouch!” The bird nips at his ear when he says that last part.

“But he’s been doing this for a while then?”

“The only reason we know he’s not dead is because the ravens in King’s Landing have been acting _extremely_ peculiar ever since he went missing.” Podrick lets out a heavy sigh. He must still be blaming himself for that, then.

“Peculiar, like being able to bring a message to two men in the middle of nowhere.” Jon points at the Raven’s paw, where a note seems to be attached.

“Peculiar like that, yes. He must’ve seen our journey along the King’s Road.” He puts a peach down on one of the rocks nearby, and waits for the raven to hop off his head before trying to untie the note from its leg.

“Have you tried asking it where Bran…I mean, Bran’s body…where that is?”

“We have. He just sort of looks at us like he doesn’t understand. Wait. -” He turns to the bird. “- Bran, do you know where the human you is?”

The bird stares at him, but gives them no sign of recognition. Eventually, it simply returns to eating the peach.

“See?”

“He doesn’t get it.” Jon concludes.

“Trust me, we all really wish that he did.” There’s a mournful note in Pod’s voice.

“We’ll find him. The human him.” He promises.

“Hm.” Is the only reply he gets. Perhaps because Podrick is reading. Or maybe just because doesn’t quite believe it himself yet.

“What’s the note say?”

“It’s from Ser Brienne. She’s talked to Oren’s family, but they’ve got nothing. According to them, he hasn’t been acting strangely as of late, a bit absent-minded, perhaps, but nothing more.” He folds the note and puts it in one of his pockets.

 “A dead end.” Jon sighs.

“Not for us. We still have miles left to go before sundown.”  Podrick counters.

“We’re done lunching then?”

“Unless you have more questions you want to try asking the bird?” He points at the raven, which is still looking at Pod like it’s expecting more peaches.

But Jon really doesn’t know what else he’s meant to ask an animal that isn’t going to answer him, Bran or no Bran.

So, onwards they go.

They don’t really speak once they’re back on the horses. Not for a while. There’s too much to digest. More than just the flatbread, anyway.  

What he does notice, though, is that the further they get along the King’s Road, the more crowded it seems to become. When they’d left this morning, there’d been no-one as far as they could see. About an hour before lunch, there’d been a cart here or a group of travellers there, but now? They’ve only just spotted the towers of Harrenhal in the distance, but it almost looks as if they’ve reached a town.

One built purely by the means you might have on the side of the road.

There are people everywhere, clustered in small groups, waiting for…something. Others are still heading north and another stream of them is heading back south.

There’s laughter and noises and people trading things they might need or not need. Jon even spots several red priests and priestesses giving sermons. Their loud, commanding voices and bright red robes are drawing the smallfolk to them.

“There’s a lot of…” Jon turns to Pod.

“Yeah, I’ll say.” He replies, looking out at the crowds the priests are drawing.

“Do you think they’re…?” He’s not sure how to finish that sentence. Part of the Dragon Cult? Dangerous? Here with a mission?

“No.-” Podrick tells him. “-No, I don’t think so. Listen to what they’re saying.”

And when he does, Jon quickly notices that these men and women are not speaking in any Essosi tongue. They can easily be understood by anyone who grew up a mere stone’s throw from this very road, but what they’re talking about is what gets to him. It’s not about power or destruction or subjugation. It’s about travel and bread and harvest and children being born. Just everyday things.

“What are they all doing here?” He wonders.

“I don’t know. I think…maybe they’re refugees?” Pod gives him a quizzical look.

“Refugees? From where?”

“Volantis was sacked, Meereen just had to cast out an army of mercenaries, the Stormlands are flooded with people from Essos, the Westerlands are constantly raided by the Ironborn fleet and the Crownlands, well, you know about the Crownlands. Could be any of those places, I suppose. There’s a lot of chaos in the world nowadays.” He shrugs.

“When wasn’t there a lot of chaos?” Jon sighs.  

“Fair enough. But what I don’t get is why they are all standing _here_ specifically?” He looks over the heads of the people, even as they carefully let their horses trot forward.

The crowd is growing thicker now, and the amicable atmosphere from before seems to disappear. The priests, the traders and the carpenters are gone. There is no space for that here. Instead there are scuffles. Men pushing at each other. Shouts coming from up ahead.

Jon and Podrick both have to do their utmost to keep their horses from panicking.

“This isn’t going to work!” Pod roughly tugs at the reins.

And well, he’s not exactly wrong. Jon carefully brings his horse to halt and clambers off the saddle. Riding is no longer an option. This is a challenge they’ll have to face on foot.

It takes a while to worm their way to the front of the line, to the epicentre of the chaos. It’s not at Harrenhal, but it’s not far off either. It seems that King’s Landing isn’t the only part of the realm that’s under construction.

Here, the men from the Riverlands have built up their own version of a wall. There are barricades as far as the eye can see. Probably all the way up to the castle itself. Behind it is what appears to be about half of the Tully Bannermen. They’re lined up, spears in hand, and judging by the occasional splatter of blood on the barricades, ready to use them.

In the middle of the road, a makeshift gate has been made. Well, it’s not even really a gate. Just a hole in-between the jagged wooden structures. Large enough for a big cart to come through, but small enough to plug shut with a battalion of soldiers.

“What in the Seven Hells…?” Podrick breathes.

“How long has this been here?” Jon asks.

“I…I…have no idea.” His friend splutters. “- This isn’t _meant_ to be here at all. As far as I know we’ve received no word of an obstruction in the Riverlands.”

“It looks new. Or, new enough, at least.” Nothing’s been hammered into the ground. There’s no stone or masonry to speak off. It’s just a bunch of sharpened tree trunks and rubble piled up together.

“They’re putting a halt to the trade route that’s keeping half the kingdoms alive!” He seems more upset about that than he is about the fact that they’re the ones stuck on the wrong side of it.

“Not just the route…” Jon remarks.

“What are you thinking?” Pod asks.

“Edmure Tully. -” He replies. “- I was told he’s the lord of Riverrun now. Got a big moat, that castle, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, so?”

“You said there was chaos everywhere. But you didn’t mention the North, or the Riverlands, or the Vale. Between the Bay of Crabs, Blackwater Rush, the Western Hills and the Gods eye river, you can almost shut the Riverlands off from the south.”

“You think he built a _moat_ around his entire kingdom?” Podrick raises his eyebrows.

“Want to bet that this-” Jon points at the wood up ahead. “-runs from Harrenhal all the way to Maidenpool? In some shape or form anyway.”

“No. You know what? No. This isn’t…there is no way anyone in the Small Council approved of this. Not even Bronn.” Which is probably true, but Jon does wonder how many messages have actually reached the eyes of the Lord Hand at all.

Perhaps their owners died at the hands of these soldiers. Perhaps they just got lost in the stacks of paperwork on Tyrion’s desk.

Either way, Podrick is not going to stand for it. He hands Jon the reins of his horse and pushes aside the last of the people in front of them. Jon, mostly at a loss of what to do, follows him.

“What is the meaning of this? Why is this here?” Pod very calmly asks one of the men guarding the way forward.

“Get back!” He shouts.

“Hey, he just asked you a question.” Jon adds.

“I said, get back, scum!” Numerous spears are now pointed at them.

“Answer him!” A man from their side of the barricade shouts, and just like that, Jon realizes that they’ve gained an audience. People who were just waiting or complaining at first are watching them now.

“Yeah! Tell us!” Another one yells.

“Get out of here!” The soldier at the front of the battalion snaps.

“Let these people through.” Podrick tries again.

“We’ve got our orders.”

“Not from the King, you don’t.” He asserts.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Is the only answer he gets.

“I am Ser Podrick Payne of the Kingsguard, and I demand you cease this nonsense, right now.”

“Yeah!” A few more voices emerge from the crowd.

“Sure, and my mum is Cersei Lannister!” The soldier bellows.

Someone pushes Jon. Several someone’s actually. The crowd is starting to move, and in very much the wrong direction, because those Tully men don’t look like they’re about to give way. In fact, if the back of the mob keeps pressing on, then everyone at the front will end up impaled on those spears.

“This isn’t a joke!” Podrick raises his voice, seemingly unaware of the chaos that is brewing behind him.

“You’re bloody right it’s not.” More shouts, Jon doesn’t know from who.

It doesn’t matter.

Elbows are everywhere. Feet are stepping on each other. The reins are chafing the skin of his hand and the temperature is rising with every person that tries to squash in between them.

“Stop!” Jon shouts, but to no avail. It takes more than one man to hold this rabble from coming forward.

There’s a neigh, and with it, a memory bubbles up seemingly out of nowhere. A trick he used to do when he was younger, still living at Winterfell. When he was just a stupid boy with too much courage and not enough brains, who’d spent far too much time at the stables.

Jon had practiced and practiced and practiced it to perfection, right up until the point where Father had caught him doing it. First chance he got, he’d grabbed Jon by his arm, dragged him from the horses and pointedly, very pointedly, had made him promise he’d never do it again.

_Oh, Father, when we meet again someday, I suppose I’ll have to apologize for more than just breaking my promise._

The horses are riled up enough as it is, it won’t take much…just…

He turns to them, walks backwards as much as the crowd and the soldiers allow him too. Pulls the horses toward him, and spreads out his arms as wide as he can.

“Yah!” He screams as loud as possible, while holding a firm grip on the reins.

The animals, thank the Gods, do exactly as they’re supposed to.

They rear up to their full and imposing size. Hooves towering over the people, whose attention go from watching Podrick to panicking about the seemingly wild danger in their midst.

As quickly as they were up, Jon pulls at the reins to get the horses back down, which works, all eight hooves are safely back on the ground and the crowd is scattering to the left and right sides of the road. But the speed at which they’re doing so means that Jon is shoved and pushed at every angle.

The strength it takes to keep the horses in place dissipates from his hands, and when a shoulder unwittingly slams into his nose, it’s enough to set them loose.

Jon has to blink against the black spots in his eyes, and clutches someone’s arm to remain standing. Not a second later, his support is pulled away and he stumbles onto the ground.

The horses meanwhile, are really are getting out of hand. They’re not kicking, not yet, but their movements are rough, shaky and uncoordinated.

Then, another prance.

This time, there are no reins to hold, nothing to keep the animals in check. They loom over him and he’s left scrambling away from the heavy horseshoes when those come down again.

 Thankfully, by the time the animals are truly swerving out and away, the people have already dispersed.

The upside is that no-one gets hurt.

The downside is that the horses pick up the pace and quickly disappear onto the lush plains of the Riverlands.

“Shite.” He splutters, rubbing at his forehead and dropping down by the side of the road. But before he can get his full bearings, a pair of strong arms pull him up again.

“Right. Time to go. -” Podrick’s voice echoes in his head. “- Lest we want to spend a good few weeks in captivity.”

The soldiers must not’ve been very convinced by his words, then.

Eventually, the end up on a small hill that’s looking out on the King’s road and the barricade.

“Great.” Jon grumbles when they’ve flopped down onto the wet grass.

“Well, been a while since I’ve last lost a horse.” Podrick takes off his shoe and starts to shake a pebble from it.

“We could’ve lost a lot more than just the horses back there.” He replies, staring up at the blue sky above them.

“Perhaps, but are you going to be the one to explain this to the Lady Commander?” There’s a note of amusement in Pod’s tone, even now.

“Hah. I wish you good fortune in _that_ war to come.” Jon snorts.

“Thank you kindly. -” He deadpans. “- What do you think we should do now?”

“I don’t want to go back to King’s landing.” And it’s not because he dislikes it, but…there are no answers there. If they’re going to find Bran, it’ll be in the North.

“Then we’d better find a way past _them._ ” Pod nods at the barricade.

“I know.”

“Do you want to try crossing one of the rivers? Might be a detour, but I doubt they’ll have soldiers stationed at every bend.”

“Water’s too rough, I should think. I don’t envy anyone who tries to get on the other side without a good, sturdy boat. Not with the way it’s been raining.” Jon sighs.

“We could try starting a rebellion. Overthrow whoever came up with this absurd plan to keep the refugees out.” It’s a joke. He knows it’s a joke, but still, Jon can’t really leave it at that.

“That would only hurt the innocent travellers more than it would Lord Tully.” He sits up, picking a blade of grass from his hair.

“Aye. It would. But what else are we supposed to do?”

“They can’t have corked the whole thing up. Not with the kind of people that traverse along the King’s Road. If they had, every noble from Salt Shore to Last Hearth would be complaining.” Jon hums, staring down at gateway, now abandoned aside from the soldiers.

The mob will probably swell up again, but perhaps not for a little while yet.

“So, they must be letting someone through.” Podrick concludes.

“If you’ve got the means, the gold or the pedigree, the world’s your oyster.” he replies.

“Unfair, but true.” His friend sighs.

“Tell me, Podrick, how many nobles would recognize you upon first glance?” Jon asks.

“Probably everyone who’s ever asked for an audience with the king, or those who’ve been around the Capital.” Pod shrugs.

“A lot, then.”

“I’d say.”

“How long do you think it would take for one of them to pass through here?”

The answer, as it turns out, is not very long. Relatively speaking. Because while they’re stuck spending the night on their little hilltop, and then most of the next day, eventually, something changes. And suddenly, down the road, there’s a banner Podrick recognizes.

Hell, it’s one Jon recognizes too.

A slim falcon soaring against a white moon on a sky-blue field.

“House Arryn…” He mutters.

“And the black and bronze of House Royce.” Pod finishes, a smile already on his face.

The convoy that carries those banners consists of a decorated carriage with blinds on the windows and several riders at the front and the back of the vehicle.

“Alright, remember, we only have _one_ chance at success and it hinges on the element of surprise and well…your face.” Jon tells his friend.

“Yep. Got it. You don’t need to tell me a seventh time.” He snarks back.

The crowd below is still not as large as it was yesterday, and the men and women that _are_ there have already stepped aside once they saw the squad of knights heading their way. Thankfully, that means that Podrick and Jon will only have to wrestle their way through two or three rows of people before they’re right where they want to be.

Still, they’re going to have to time this perfectly.

Silently, Jon counts down the steps and the seconds until the knights are where they need to be. He’s spent most of yesterday evening and this morning trying to get the measurement right so that he knows the exact moment when they should…

“Go!” He snaps.

And then they’re off, running down the hill. Packs and gear hung by their side. Once they reach the crowd, there’s no time to apologize or see who they’re pushing down and aside. All that matters is the small door at the side of the carriage. The tiny step up they’ve got and what little there is to hold onto.

Jon reaches it first.

He hops on and throws the door open.

The knights and the soldiers don’t have time to react.

Podrick, with his heavy armour, is with him a breath later, and Jon unceremoniously pushes him into the carriage.

There’s a high-pitched screech and a heavy thump.

Jon follows him in and comes face to face with a young man in expensive clothes and someone who is very obviously an older knight.  

The young man, still pale from the shock, wordlessly hands his goblet of wine to Podrick, who heartily accepts it.

That’s of no concern to Jon, though, because the soldiers have finally found it in them to respond to the ‘danger’. The carriage has stopped and while the Tully men seem to have abandoned their spears (probably to protect the owner of the carriage) their hands are roughly trying to grab at Jon, who’s still sat near the entrance of the vehicle.

In retaliation, he can only think to lean back against Pod and kick at their arms and faces.

“What the…!? -” The older knight roars. “-Stop this! Stop this at once, you fools!”

It’s not entirely clear if he means Jon or the soldiers, but either way, his deep and commanding voice enough for both parties to let up on the violence.

“Thank you. Now, would someone please explain to me what in the Seven Hells is going on?”

“Lord Royce, these men have tried to illegally cross a toll gate!” The soldier, same one as they met yesterday, barks.

“Oh, is that what we call locking out the _entire south_ these days?” Jon snaps back.

“You fucking ingrate, that’s-” The soldier tries.

“Shut it!-” Lord Royce tells him. “- Do you have any idea who these two men are?”

“Uh?”

“This is Lord Jon Snow, Commander of the Night’s Watch and Ser Podrick Payne of the Kingsguard.”

“Cheers. -” Podrick smiles at the soldier, holding up his goblet of wine. “- Say hi to Cersei for me.”

“They were both instrumental in saving the _whole of Westeros._ So, I think we might be able to remit the payment of the toll gate, wouldn’t you say, hm?” The knight raises an eyebrow.

“Yes, Lord Royce. Of course, Lord Royce.” The soldier splutters and something like relief settles in Jon’s stomach.

“And close the door behind you, please.” The younger man in the carriage adds, waving the soldier away.

“Yes. My lord.” Is the last thing he murmurs before shutting the little carriage door and disappearing from their view completely.

“Now then, good Sers, why don’t you tell us both what is _really_ going on here?”  

Jon looks at Podrick, who is staring back at him with the same question in his eyes, because well, where are they even meant to start with this?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'd like to give out another quick little thank you to Maelia, without whom this chapter might not have been written at all!


	9. A Fragile Balance

It’s not exactly easy to explain to Yohn Royce and Robin Arryn what their situation entails, but eventually, they both seem to understand that Jon is not _that_ Jon and that he and Podrick are on a mission.

Well, to some degree.

“So, there’s _two_ of you?” Lord Robin asks.

“Theoretically, yes.” Jon replies.

“But you don’t know that.” He raises his eyebrows.

“I haven’t personally met the Lord Commander. So no, I wouldn’t know for sure.”

“And you…don’t remember anything from the past eight years?” The young Arryn points his finger at Jon’s chest.

“No.” He answers.

“Even though you definitely did all those things.”

“That wasn’t him.-” Podrick replies. “- He didn’t exist back then.”

“Well, I did. I was just trapped in Melisandre’s necklace.” It’s out before he can regret the fact that his words might only make matters more difficult.

“So, there was only _one_ of you at first, but now there are _two?_ ” Lord Robin tries again.

“Yes.” He nods.

“Are you from the past?”

“What? No.” Jon scrunches up his nose.

“Strictly speaking, we’re all from the past and travelling to the future as we go about our lives.” Podrick suggests, delving them once more into a complex discussion no-one is ready for.

“Let’s not go there.” He tells Pod.

“How do we know you’re not someone pretending to be Lord Snow?” Robin cocks his head to the side.

Jon opens his mouth to reply to that, but finds that he’s not really sure what to say.

“If…Maybe…Look, y-you can ask me something about my life? Or at least, up until eight years ago. And I’ll tell you…the truth?” Or what Jon perceives as the truth, because at this point how can he be sure that what he remembers is the same as what the other Jon remembers?

“This is very complicated.” Robin sighs, staring at Podrick.

“ ’Fraid so, my Lord. If it helps, you can think of the Lord Commander as ‘Lord Snow’, and this one over here as just ‘Jon’.” His friend says.

“Regardless of the specifics, if you’re on a mission for the King himself, then we are obligated to help wherever we can.” Lord Royce butts in. Now, it’s very noble of him to want to assist, but there’s not all that much he can do.

Mostly because Jon and Podrick are not on a mission _for_ the king, so much as they’re on a mission to _get_ the king. And it wouldn’t exactly be wise to go and share the knowledge that Bran is missing. The Six Kingdoms don’t need more upheaval. After all, they’ve got plenty of that as is.

Which brings them to whatever Edmure Tully thinks he’s doing.

“Really, we’d just like to go North. That’s all.” Jon says.

“Preferably without any more illegitimate blockades.” Pod adds.

“What do you mean, illegitimate?” Lord Robin intercedes.

“What? You didn’t think the crown issued whatever that was, did you?” He answers.

“I…we were told that this was simply a means to collect taxes. To keep the King’s Road well-paved.” Lord Royce looks between the two of them.

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but those men weren’t exactly trying to get paid back there.” Jon huffs.

“But if they don’t want gold…-” He can see the precise moment when it dawns on the old knight what exactly is going on. “- The refugees? Surely not?”

“It seems that way.” Podrick sighs.

“Damn it all, I told that fool to not give into his vagaries so easily! I told him to think before doling out orders!” Lord Royce rests his hand on his forehead.

“Look, whatever it is, can’t we just discuss it with Uncle Edmure when we get to Winterfell?” Robin Arryn says, and Jon’s stomach does an interesting sort of flip when he hears the mention of his old home.

Going to the North is one thing. It’s a vague and nebulous concept. Plenty of time to decide where exactly in the kingdom he’d need to be. Traveling with someone who is going to Winterfell specifically is most certainly not vague. It creates a dilemma. One that he’d only planned to face once they’re well past the Twins, and no sooner than that.

“To Winterfell? W-why…why are you going to Winterfell?” he splutters.

“For Sansa’s name day, of course. Don’t you know that? Aren’t you supposed to be her brother or something?” The Lord of the Vale replies in a bored tone, staring out of the carriage window.

“Yeah, or something.” Jon mutters. Trying not to think about what ‘or something’ might mean to her. Or to him, for that matter.

“Robin, you forget yourself. Our friends have a lot on their minds. They cannot be expected to remember every banquet held in the Six Kingdoms or the North.” Lord Royce raises an eyebrow, and sure enough, the young Lord seems humbled.

“Sorry.” He mutters, but looks to Podrick instead of Jon.

“But if it’s north you’re going, then let us at least take you that far.” The old knight finishes, and well, how can they say no to that?

They’ve got no horses. Crossing the distance on foot will take at least twice as long. Furthermore, there’s no telling how many surprises the Tully men may have in store for them yet. Travelling under the Banners of house Arryn will circumvent those easily.

Also, judging by the look on Podrick’s face, there’s something to be said for the free food and wine that will come with their travelling companions.

“Sure. Why not?” Jon replies.

And so, they’re suddenly travelling in a wholly different way. It’s not that the men of the Vale are lacking in horses, or that they’re unwilling to lend them to Podrick and Jon. It’s just that if they do, someone else will have to sit in the carriage.

With Robin.

Who is, quite frankly, a bit of a twat.

Or at least, that’s Jon’s opinion of him. Podrick and he seem to be getting along swimmingly. They spent the first two hours of their shared journey chatting about nothing and drinking more wine.

And then Pod promptly abandons Jon so he can go and sit on the front of the carriage with Lord Royce.

So now he’s stuck listening to the bloody Lord of the Vale by himself. Which would be less of a problem if that Arryn child (who is probably the same age as Jon is, but it really doesn’t feel that way) would just be talking at him.

But no. He keeps asking these probing questions that Jon has no clue how to answer.

“Are you the Targaryen one?” He asks, and scarfs down another cookie.

“What?” Jon squints.

“I said, are you the Targaryen one or are you the Stark one?” Robin’s now moved onto to picking the edges of his next sugary victim.

“Why would I be one or the other?” Because really, unfortunately, _he’s both._

“Well, the other Jon is a Stark. So, you should be a Targaryen, right?” And that hurts.

That really fucking hurts.

Something pierces his heart. He’s not…look, he knows he’s not a Stark. Has always known that he would never be that. Not like Robb, Sansa, Bran, Arya or Rickon are. He’s _something else._ He’s learned to live with _something else._

But the idea that this other him, this stupid, callous fool who gave away his crown and his home, who hurt so many people, is a Stark and he isn’t? That he’s somehow earned that name but Jon hasn’t?

It sets off a riot in his chest.

“Why is he the Stark?” Jon croaks. Tries to swallow down on the bitterness that’s clogging his throat.

“He’s got a direwolf. -” Robin shrugs, wholly unaware of the impact his words have. “- You don’t. And everyone knows Starks have direwolves and Targaryen have dragons. So…”

“I don’t have a dragon.” And thank the Gods for that. Jon has no idea what he’d do with a dragon, but he’s seen the damage they can cause and…just no.

“Oh, yeah. I guess you’re not really a Targaryen either, then.” The young lord scrunches up his nose.

“What does it even _matter_ what I am?” he grits his teeth. If this goes on any longer, Jon will jump out of this damned carriage and will _walk_ to the North after all.

“Calm down, alright. I just wanted to know if you were going to be part of the family.” And alright, he’d pegged Robin Arryn as dim-witted before, but to not know the extent of one’s own relatives…

“You know we don’t share any blood, right? Even if I am a Stark, I bear no relation to Lady Catelyn.”

“Of course I know that. I’m not stupid. -” Robin huffs “- I was just wondering if you were going to be, after.”

“After what…?” Jon asks, because he’s lost as to wherever this is going to.

“After I marry Sansa, of course.”

“After you do _what now_?” He nearly chokes on the words alone.

_I can’t jump out of the carriage. I can’t jump out of the carriage. I cannot jump out of the carriage. I cannot-_

Perhaps some of Jon’s disbelief has finally landed in the Arryn boy’s head. Because he quickly launches into a detailed explanation of his thoughts.

“I’m the obvious choice, really. Our families know each other well. Sansa and I practically grew up together after uncle Petyr brought her to us. And my mother would’ve been so pleased to-”

Something ugly and dark begins to grow in Jon as he natters on _._ The very thought of it has him struggling to stay in place. The images that are already forming in his mind are sickening. This shallow prick and _Sansa._ It’s almost as bad as that little miscreant of a Joffrey prancing into Winterfell and snatching her up with the snap of his fingers.

“Don’t you think it would be a little weird?” He tries, because honestly, at this point it’s either that or throttling the absurd man-child himself.

“Why, because we’re cousins? That’s not weird! Lord Tywin married his cousin and no-one cared about that. So did Lord Rickard. We’re not _Targaryens_ , you know _._ ”

 _I thought I wasn’t a Targaryen either?_ Jon thinks wistfully, but decides not to press that issue any further.

“I merely meant that it would be difficult. Since she’s the ruler of a sovereign nation and you’re the lord of one of the Kingdoms. Surely you can’t expect her to give up her crown and live in the Vale with you? And you can’t exactly choose to go and live with her in the North. You’re the only heir to house Arryn.”

“Oh please, like we’re going to be part of the Kingdoms for much longer. Once I marry Sansa, the Vale will join the North and I will be king of both.” He grins.

And Jon?

Jon has decided that this is not a train of thought he’s willing to entertain.

“Stop the cart!” He bellows.

He’s out of the vehicle before the wheels have ceased to turn. Stomping off the road and into a green ditch that has a small stream running through it. Once he’s crouched by the edge of it and is splashing some of the cool water onto his face, Jon can hear voices coming from behind.

“What happened?” That one belongs to Lord Royce.

“I think he must’ve gotten sick from the swaying of the carriage.” The grating tone of Robin pierces through his angry haze.

“That doesn’t sound much like Jon.” Podrick says, even as his footsteps begin to approach.

And just as he’s debating with himself on whether or not sticking his head down the creek will cool him down sufficiently, Pod reaches his side.

“Are you alright?” Jon hears him say.

“Don’t you ever leave me alone with that _cock_ ever again. -” He bites. “- For my sake or for his.”

“Oh dear, what has he said this time?” Lord Royce gives them a weary sigh.

“Is it true?” Jon snaps at him.

“Is what true?”

“Are you really planning to usurp the Northern throne?”

The old knight honestly looks baffled at the very suggestion.

“Jon, why would they…? They don’t even have half the men it would take to invade the North.” Pod crouches down to his level and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“They’re not going to invade _,_ Podrick. He intends to take Sansa’s crown through marriage!” He points back at the road, where Robin has _presumably_ started shoving more cakes down his throat.

“Were you really?” Pod looks up at Lord Royce, sounding both curious, disappointed and betrayed.

“I…well…it’s not that simple…Is that what he said back there?...Because…because it would be up to the queen first and foremost.”

“But you’d like that _,_ wouldn’t you? To put his arse on a throne that will give him a land _four times_ the size of what he has now?!” Jon raises up to his full height, and despite the fact that Bronze Yohn Royce can still easily look down upon him, he seems a bit intimidated.

“No. No, of course not. I think…I think our young lord may have gotten a slightly skewed image of what I’d hope would happen. If queen Sansa were to agree to a match with him, I doubt Lord Arryn would ever be included in matters of state. The Vale would become a part of the North, yes, but I can assure that we would gladly follow her word over his.” The old knight splutters.

“And how would your arrangement be in any way fair to Sansa? Saddling her with _that_ over there for the rest of her life!” he snarls.

“Like I said, it would be up to the queen to decide. I do not want for her to be unhappy. But they are of the right age and another suitor might not be so easily swayed to give up control as Robin is. The marriage would be practical, if nothing else.” There is something gentle about his voice, like he truly means to do well by Sansa.

“Besides, he might grow out of this behaviour. He’s young. It could just be a phase.” Podrick shrugs, as if that would make it any better.

To his credit, even Royce scoffs at that suggestion.

“I appreciate your optimism, Ser Podrick, but tell me honestly, did you ever have to grow out of a ‘phase’ quite like his?”

“No. No, I don’t believe so.” Pod hums.

“Look, I…I don’t agree with your assessment of the situation -” Jon tells Lord Royce “- As great as this would be for you and yours. I don’t think it would be for Sansa or the North.”

“You don’t have to agree with me, Lord Snow. I don’t expect you to. In fact, I wholly expect you to tell the queen of our disagreement when you see her again. But I have to try to do what I believe is best for my kingdom.” He replies.

“I suppose you do.” Jon rakes a hand through his hair and tries to find some sort of silver lining through all of this.

Sansa would not want that slimy twat. Surely. She may have been impressed by Joffrey the last time he saw her, but she’s grown now. She fed her husband to his own dogs for hurting her. She’s clearly learned to take care of herself. So maybe…maybe he should just trust her to make the right decision.

“Come. There’s an Inn nearby where we can stay for the night. I’ll ask my son to give up his horse for you. Gods know he’s long since gotten used to dealing with Robin.” Lord Royce claps a hand on Jon’s shoulder.

It’s not quite comfortable yet, but his rage seems to have subsided. Riding through the countryside in _blissful silence_ for another hour takes most of the edge off at least.

A mug of ale once they’ve finally settled themselves at the old wooden Inn does the rest, finally.

He’s sharing a table with Podrick, and exactly no-one else. Most of the men that are travelling with them have already retired or are playing cards in the corner. Lord Royce and the _twat_ are nowhere to be seen, and Jon would very much like to keep it that way.

There are girls too. A gaggle of them near the barrels of wine. He doesn’t know if they’re the innkeeper’s daughters or just some local girls from around or maybe even whores. Whatever they are, though, they seem very keen on the two of them. They’ve spent half the evening trying to garner the attention of either Pod or himself by giggling, sending coy glances their way and waving at them when they _do_ look back.

“So, are you going to…?” Podrick asks eventually.

“No.-” Jon is decidedly not in the mood for any of this. “- Are you?”

“I swore a vow not to marry, or father children.” He shrugs.

“So did I.” Jon wipes his thumb past the handle of his mug.

“I don’t know that yours counts anymore.” Pod tells him.

“What do you mean?”

“Doesn’t a black brother’s watch end at death?” There’s another girl trying to get their attention. They both ignore it.

“I’m not dead.” He replies flatly.

“Not anymore. But you were. For quite a while actually. I know the other Jon renewed his vows after…well, after everything.” he lazily waves his hand around.

“I wouldn’t know what to do with them.-” Jon sighs, casting one more cursory glance at the young women. “- and I’m tired. So, they can go and find themselves a husband elsewhere.”

He gets up from the table, rubbing at his eyes.

“Suppose I’d best get some sleep as well.” Podrick yawns.

They’re sharing a room in the attic, mostly because the men of the Vale have taken to the other rooms. He doesn’t know what those look like, but their chamber has two beds, very little space and one window overlooking the stables. Still, it’s better than trying to find some measure of comfort on the cold, hard ground. Pod sure seems to think so, because he’s snoring in about ten seconds flat after laying down.

But Jon?

Jon takes a little longer to fall asleep.

There’s a weariness in his bones, but a buzzing still left in his mind. He cannot stop thinking about what Robin kept saying. Not just the awful things about taking the North, but also the questions. The never-ending questions that plague Jon too.

Which Jon is he really?

Is there a difference between the two of them?

Perhaps he really is the Targaryen side of Jon Snow made flesh. Sure, he might not have a dragon, but he could feel the wrath thrumming in his blood today. That same incandescent rage may well have set fire to the Capital.

And if he isn’t a Targaryen, then why are there flames licking at the edge of his consciousness? Why can he smell the smoke? why can he already feel the heat?

Perhaps it’s because he’s no longer lying down in a small bed in the middle of nowhere.

Instead, he’s staring out to a dark and clouded sky. Smoke is billowing up and when he looks down, he finds himself standing on a floor of white bark.

It’s a branch, he realizes with a sudden clarity. He’s standing on an enormous branch and if he looks around, he can see red leaves as big as he is. Or perhaps it’s not the leaves that are big? Perhaps it’s Jon himself who is infinitely smaller than he used to be.

The dizzying sensation of it all has him wobbling on his feet and grasping for the tree’s trunk, ever so much larger than it ought to be. When he’s got a firm grip and finally finds the courage to look down, he can’t see the earth. Instead, all he sees is fire.

The red-hot, bright patches of it are doing their utmost to climb up the tree, trying to claw their way towards him, trying to destroy everything in its way.

He doesn’t know how long the tree will last in this state. And has no clue how to get down from this. Sure, he could try to climb up further, to escape the heat, but eventually, the flames will either reach him anyway or will fell the forest giant altogether.

Then, a caw.

Something races through the leaves. Wind gusts arise every time this big black beast flaps its wings, and Jon finds himself coughing against the dust and the ash it carries upwards.

Another caw.

The creature comes flying past him again, and this time, Jon can get a better look at it.

It’s a raven. A gigantic raven with three glinting eyes that look more determined than they should.

The fire is closer now. Far too close.

If he doesn’t move, if he doesn’t start climbing or _something,_ he’ll be consumed by them.

The raven caws again. Flies by one more time.

Jon finds himself heaving against the smoke. Stumbling away from the trunk and out further to the edge of the branch. And this time, when the raven passes him, Jon suddenly knows what he’s meant to do.

What he’s going to do.

Tentatively, he takes about six steps backwards. That’s all the space he has, and all the space he needs.

He takes a deep breath, suddenly free from the noxious air, and when he sees the first glimpse of black he starts running forwards and onwards.

His feet set off against the white bark and then, just like that, he’s _flying._

Or falling.

It’s mostly falling.

His stomach bottoms out and he hopes, _prays,_ that this will work.

Sure enough, with a resounding _oomph_ Jon lands on the creature’s large back. It wobbles and moves as he struggles to hold on, but somehow, he knows that he can’t stay where he is. He has to go forward. To the head of the beast.

With a courage and a prudence Jon didn’t know he possessed; he slowly starts to rise to his feet. Balances himself with his arms and when he looks out to them, he can see that he’s got a large branch of weirwood in his right hand, and the Valyrian dagger in his left.

He doesn’t know why.

Has no clue what it all means.

But there’s another caw.

And then another.

And then one more. Slowly the sound of it begins to change. Begins to shift into something else completely.

A voice.

‘Caw’ it says at first. And then ‘Jaw.’ And then ‘Jon’.

“Jon.” He hears. It’s vague and far away.

“Jon!” Again. This time closer, and more urgent.

“Jon, what in the Seven Hells are you doing?!” Podrick’s voice reaches him loud and clear, and with a shock, he opens his eyes.

Only to find a clear blue sky staring straight at him.

“Jon! You have to wake up. Jon!” He shouts again.

“What the…” Jon breathes.

“Are you awake, son? Don’t move. Whatever you do, don’t move.” Yohn Royce is there too, evidently.

“Jon! _Do not move!_ ” Podrick shouts, and Jon instinctively looks down to where the voice is coming from.

He only sees the roof of the stables.

“Oh, bloody-” Is all he gets out before his bare feet slip on the wet, mouldy wood.

His chest slams into the beam that he was standing on, taking the breath from his lungs. His elbows and shins scrape at the boards when he tumbles off them and then there’s the sensation of falling again.

This time, there’s no raven to catch him, but rather the muddy ground. his hands and knees are left taking the blow, and with a sharp pain and a muffled cry, Jon ends up laying face-first in the dirt.

“What…what…?” he heaves, unable to hoist himself up for the time being.

“Are you alright?!” Podrick turns him over, but Jon can do nothing more than just groan.

“Did he hit his head?” Lord Royce comes to lean over him.

“I don’t think so?” Pod looks down at him again.

“No…I didn’t. I don’t. It’s not that bad.” He tries to get up into a seated position, which proves to be a bit a challenge. Thankfully, Podrick’s there to help.

“Break anything?” Is the next question from the old knight.

“My pride. Probably. But nothing more.” He tries to wipe the mud off his face, but only ends up making things worse with the state his hands are in.

“What were you doing all the way up there?” Pod asks, eyebrows having crept nearly up to his hairline.

“I dreamt…I don’t know what I dreamt.” It’s true, in a sense. He tries to recall the images, but while he can clearly see the tree, the raven, the fire and everything else in his mind’s eye, none of it makes any sort of sense.

“And you walked onto the roof of the stables in your dream?” His friend asks.

“No, I walked on a raven’s spine in my dream. And then…I woke up and I fell.” He blurts out.

“Yeah, you definitely fell alright.” Podrick murmurs.

“But it was just a dream…How did I…?”

“I really don’t know. -” Pod looks up, eyes turning to small window of their room. “- But I think we ought keep a closer eye on you at night.”

Which, Jon has to concede, would probably be for the best.


	10. A Swing of the Sword

It’s at a different inn and on a different day of the week that Jon comes back to his little misadventure on the roof of the stable. The scrapes on his arms and legs are healing nicely, his ribs have stopped hurting and his wrists are able to swing around a sword with no problem.

And it hasn’t happened since.

_Thank the Gods._

They’ve been watching him, during the nights. A guard posted at his door and Podrick waking up several times just to see if he’s still in his bed.

But evidently, he’s not been clambering out of any windows.

And that’s just it, isn’t it? Having a bad dream is one thing. Thinking you’re a wolf trotting through the snow is nothing unusual as long as you’re safe and sound in your own bed.

And not, say, wandering off into a blizzard all by yourself.

Bad dreams, Jon can handle. Has been handling for quite a while now.

But not having control over his own body…?

That’s not so easily swallowed down. The question of ‘why ’ continues to be on his mind. Why is he seeing these things? Presumably to help find Bran. That’s what the huge three eyed raven was about. Or so Pod tells him. But still, why like this? Why not just let him dream alone if he wants to show him something?

If and when he sees Bran again, they’re going to have something to talk about. That’s for sure.

With a heavy sigh, he lets his gaze wander over the makeshift sparring ground they’ve made. It’s just a patch of grass with a few shields and a weapon rack scattered around. But really, they don’t need much more. Podrick can take his time pummelling these men here, five-hundred miles back, or all the way up in the North.  It makes no difference.

“Don’t you just love watching them?” The shrill, infuriating tone of Robin’s voice reaches his ears, and Jon almost automatically starts counting to ten.

_What will it take for this infantile halfwit to back away?_

“Hm?” he takes a deep breath, already anticipating what comes next.

“Those knights. Going at it like that. Flexing their muscles. Showing their strength!” The Lord of the Vale seems inordinately pleased by a scuffle on the side of the road.

“Sure…” He hazards a look at him. His expression seems genuine, eyes fixed on the sparring in front of them. The twat is not trying to mock him.

“Hey! -” Podrick comes hobbling up, half-dressed and covered in sweat. He must’ve thrown his latest opponent to the ground once he saw Robin approach. “- we getting ready to go?”

 “I don’t know, has Andar had enough?” Jon snorts.

“Reckon he has.” His friend grins, and Jon is glad that he’s got a man like Podrick to watch his back.

“Y-yes. We’re definitely going. We should. Will you be riding next to me today, Ser Podrick?” Robin asks. He’s been doing this more often, leaving Lord Royce and one of his sons in the carriage, and riding out with them instead.

“Sure.” Pod shrugs. The ‘better me than Jon’ is left unspoken.

How Podrick can be so calm and easy-going is mostly beyond Jon. Yes, fair enough, as Lord Royce has explained, their bid for the Northern throne is wholly up to Sansa, and even _if_ she agrees, it won’t be Robin holding the reins.

But still…

_Still…_

It’s the principle of the thing.

She shouldn’t have to…Sansa’s…She deserves better, is what Jon thinks. He’s not exactly sure what ‘better’ entails, but there’s got to be someone out there who’s more fitting than Robin _fucking_ Arryn.

He spends a long time mulling on this. In fact, the thought plagues him while they pass along more and more of the King’s Road. Because it’s not just a matter of Robin’s godawful personality, it’s also a matter of what the North needs. Especially now that they’ve become an independent nation to rival all six of the kingdoms at once.

Any sign of weakness, a single slip in leadership, and the North might very well be drawn back under the control of King’s Landing. Which isn’t terrible so long as it’s Bran sitting on the throne ( _when_ he’s sitting on the throne again) but who knows what his successor might think.

The point is, the North needs to be strong. Needs to be secure. It needs to be able to stand on its own, and Jon simply can’t see how that’s going to work if it’s being led by a Southern-born King. It’ll be too easy for the needless backstabbers and toxic sycophants to seep into the bones of Winterfell.

And that? That can’t happen. Sure, they need the kingdoms for trade, for diplomatic agreements, but if they want to break free, they cannot afford to have the south sink its teeth into the North like that. Not now. Maybe in a few generations.

But not now.

The thought keeps him up during the nights (which is arguably better than falling asleep and maybe ending up on a roof again) and occupied during the days. It’s helpful, in the sense that he hasn’t felt the urge to wring Lord Arryn’s neck and he isn’t bothered by the torrents of rain that have been plaguing them this week. But it’s less helpful when there’s a shift in their environment.

Like now.

It takes him several seconds too long to realize there’s an upheaval at the front of their convoy. That they’ve stopped, and not because Robin’s got a mighty need to piss again.

No, there’s unrest amongst the horses and more importantly, amongst the men.

Something has gone amiss.

“Pod! -” He shouts, giving his horse the spurs. “- What’s…?”

But he doesn’t need to finish his sentence, because it’s really rather clear what’s going on. Or at least, why they’ve stopped.

The road’s been blocked.

But this time, it’s not a wooden barricade. There are no soldiers. No-one to talk too.

Instead, there’s just _red._

Red robes. Red smears. Little red streams running down the bricks of the road, mingling in with the rain.

“Oh Gods.” Robin gags, averting his eyes and turning his horse away from the carnage.

Podrick and Jon, though, don’t exactly have the luxury of being horrified. They’ve already climbed off their horses and are approaching the pile. It is, after all, their job to protect the Realms from terror, rather than shying away from it.

“Red priests.” Pod sighs, gaze flitting over the pile of bodies.

“And priestesses.” Jon finishes, trying to wipe the rain from his brow.

There are so many of them. At least a dozen. Probably more. You need a lot of them to be able to block off the road entirely.

“How long have they been dead, d’you reckon?” His friend asks.

“Not long. Otherwise we’d have been able to smell them from a long way away.” He answers.

“Perhaps not. The rain could’ve been hiding the scent, and maybe…they had to have been moved here. I don’t think they all died in a single row on top of one another.” Pod reasons.

Which is fair, Jon supposes, even as he’s trying to figure out _what_ exactly killed these people. His first guess is blades. A lot of them. Angry townsfolk? Scared of the Essosi refugees in the same way Edmure evidently is?

It seems likely, right up until he lifts the sleeve of one of the dead women’s robes. There, branded and blackened, is the word Nāpāstre.

“Podrick!” He motions him to come closer. To take a look.

“Ah, shite.” Pod mutters, in his hand is an ornately carved quarterstaff. Presumably taken from the pile. It’s got little animal motifs running up and down it in a spiral pattern. Birds and snakes and whatnot.

“What does it mean?”

“We’ve seen it pop up in King’s Landing a few times. Benerro told us it means ‘traitor’. Apparently, the cultists used it a lot during the sack of Volantis.”

“So, this was done by them?”

“Yes? No? I’m not sure. Could be that this priestess escaped death in the city only to find it here on the road instead. -” He rakes a hand through his soaked hair. “- But why? Why put them here, in the middle of nowhere?”

  _Why indeed?_ Jon wonders, looking around. Pod’s right, this seems like a very random place to dump bodies. There’s nothing but the road and a patch of green he hesitates calling a forest. It’s just a few clusters of trees gathered around them. There are no inns, no villages and no reason to come here aside from passing through. In fact, the only reason they’ve stopped is…

It runs through Jon’s head like a shock.

 “We’ve stopped.” He whispers, looking at the men that are quietly waiting on their horses. At the carriage sitting in the middle of the road.

His hand is on his sword within the blink of an eye.

“Podrick. We’ve stopped.” He blurts out, and something like alarm glides over his friend’s expression.

“Seven hells. -” Honour-bound is unsheathed just as quickly. “- It’s a trap!”

Their company of knights rises to the occasion, but it’s too late. Right after Podrick’s voice has rang out, there’s a thump and several cracks coming out from behind them.

A tree crashed down on the left side of the road.

And then another on the right.

The carriage can’t go forward now. Nor can it go back.

“Protect Lord Arryn! Protect Lord Royce!” Jon shouts, because he might not be a fan of either right now, but they’re important. They are what matters. They have the power to shape Westeros, but only if they don’t die here today.

And so, when the first of the thugs comes rushing out from the treeline, Jon is quick to throw himself into battle.

His opponent has an axe, and seems more than willing to swing it at him. Still, the man isn’t prepared for Jon’s footwork. A well-placed kick on one of his kneecaps is enough to send him sprawling forward.

And that’s really the last Jon sees of him, because the next of the thugs is already on him. This one has a blade, but doesn’t seem all that trained in using it. He wildly jabs with it, but is no match for Jon’s skill. With three swift strokes, he’s disarmed and has lost his swordhand altogether.

A pair of arms wrap themselves around his neck after that, shoving him backwards and nearly onto the floor, but Jon’s able to thrash his way out of it. He gets a quick glance of the battlefield when he turns around to face his enemy.

He can see the knights, some are striking from horseback, others are being dragged from their saddle altogether. Podrick’s somewhere in the fray as well, fighting off about six men by himself. Andar Royce and Yohn Royce are holding their ground at the carriage, and Jon can’t see Robin anywhere, so he must be in there. Or he ought to be, anyway.

The man who’d tried to drag him back has recovered from Jon’s elbow in his face, and is storming at him again. He’s picked up his buddy’s sword, and Jon wonders _why_ he didn’t have it in the first place because he’s obviously much more skilled with it.

This time around, his blows hit steel, not flesh, he has to parry, rather than just strike. This guy, whoever he is, was given a rudimentary training in the art of war. He gets in close. Close enough for Jon to see the knots in his unkempt hair, to see the scars on his hands and to see the bruises on his neck. Little animal motifs, snakes and birds stamped halfway onto his skin.

Jon has to kick him away though, lest he wants to lose his nose here. And the distance gives him an opportunity. His sword, heavier than Longclaw, but just as tall, allows him to strike the man in his side, who then stumbles heavily on the bricks of the road.

He wants to ask. Wants to know why this guy got into a fight with the priest who carried that Quarterstaff. Was he the one to brand them? To kill them?

But the fight isn’t over yet, and it isn’t long before his opponent is aided by another thug. An axeman again. Not the same as before. He’s got two weapons, and a ferociousness that more than makes up for what he be may lacking in skill.

Whenever Jon has stopped one axe from coming at him, he’s left dodging the next.  A lifetime of fighting men that are bigger and angrier than he is, however, have left him prepared for this eventuality. He gracefully pivots arounds the guy’s side, and cuts him at the back of his leg, sending the man down onto one knee. There are growls and sneers when Jon comes up to face again.

And Jon? Jon knows what he ought to do.

He can finish this.

All it takes is a single swing of the sword. To his neck, his chest or his stomach.

He raises his blade, ready to do what needs doing. But then, in the back of his head, there’s a niggling voice.  

_Just imagine the debt on that…_

The Master of Coin. The House of Stranger. All those skulls, there because he didn’t do better. Because another version of him had no regard for life itself.

He’s on his third attempt now.

Can’t he do things differently?

With shaking hands, Jon lowers his weapon. Whatever this man has done, they’ll find a place in the dungeons of Winterfell for him and his rabble of thugs. The fight’s over. They’re clearly done, and Jon turns to the convoy to tell them just that.   

His opponent disagrees.

It only takes a split second. One of his legs is practically useless, but the man is still able to push through, to surge ahead and swing his axe into Jon’s skull.

Or he would have. If Podrick hadn’t gotten there first.

Honour-bound comes speeding mere inches away from Jon’s cheek, before it’s rammed into his opponent’s eye-socket. There’s a sickening crunch, one final grunt and blood spattering over his face, Pod’s arm, and well, just about everywhere.

“Are you alright?” He asks Jon, even as he’s pushing the body away them and onto the ground.

“I…yes…I think so.” He breathes.

“What happened?” Pod pulls at Honour-bound, trying to dislodge it from the body.

“Just…nevermind.” Jon shakes his head, turning back to the man he’d left injured earlier. The one with the oddly shaped bruises.

He’s not in great shape. The wound Jon had inflicted upon him seems deeper than originally intended. He’d only wanted to escape. To get out from his grip and his violence. But it seems to have worked out differently, because while the damage he’s done might not be as immediate as Pod’s, it won’t be long before this one will be as dead as the other. Not with the way he’s bleeding out.

There’s something like remorse lingering in the back of Jon’s head, but in practical terms, he knows this just means they don’t have a lot of time to ask questions.

“Why you’d do it?” He grabs the man by his chin and lifts his eyes up to look into them.

“The gold, obviously. You rich bastards ought to give something back to the land.” The thug snaps, but Jon merely rolls his eyes.

“Not us _. Them. -_ ” He points at the corpse pile. “- They’re priests, they don’t have a lot of wealth. You had to have known that. So why kill them all?”

“W-what? No. We didn’t do _that._ We just found them and put them on the road.” He croaks.

“Don’t lie to me. -” Jon growls, hand moving towards the marks on his neck. “- One of them hit you with a quarterstaff. I know they did.”

“That wasn’t us. We never saw them alive. They were _just there._ Bodies in the undergrowth.” The man is getting paler by the second, and he _must_ know he’s dying. So why lie? Why now?

“Nāpāstre? Why nāpāstre, then?! Are you part of the Dragon cult?”

“I don’t…what does that even mean?” The man’s head lolls in Jon’s hands. He’s fading, and fast.

“Why did you do it? Just tell me that. That’s all I need to know!” He tries to hold him upright, tries to keep him awake, but the blood is gushing everywhere, on the road, on the man’s shirt, on Jon’s leg.

“It wasn’t us, I’ve done things, but that…It was someone else…it wasn’t us.” He whispers, before his head tips backwards one final time. Then, _nothing._ He’s gone.

Jon carefully lowers the body until it’s lying on the bricks of the road. The rain seems to have stopped, for now at least.

“That made no sense.” Pod huffs.

“You don’t say. -” Jon sighs. “- Just another damned thing that makes no sense.”

“Perhaps he was trying to protect someone else?” His friend tries.

“He could’ve done that by telling us _he_ did it. Not by denying it with his dying breath.”

“Perhaps he really didn’t do it. Maybe one of his buddies struck him with the staff while they were moving the bodies?” Podrick shrugs.

“On his _neck,_ with that amount of force? No friend would do that. Not in jest and not by accident.” Jon scrubs a hand over his face.

“And here I thought we left these sorts of murders behind in King’s Landing…It’s like they’re chasing us. This entire continent is a bloody mess.” There’s a weariness in Pod’s voice. One Jon feels deep within his own bones as well.

“Do you think they know? -” He wonders out loud. “- that we’re…about our mission?”

“How could they? We haven’t exactly been spreading the word.” Is the only reply he gets before other people begin barging into the conversation.

Namely Lord Royce and, of course, Robin Arryn.

“Are you two alright?” The old knight looks between them.

They nod.

“Thank you. For…thank you, both.” A pale-faced Robin murmurs, looking at the floor.

“What do we do now?” Lord Royce again, he’s staring at the bodies scattered and piled on the road.

“We burn them. It’s part of the priests’ religion.” Or at least, Jon thinks it is.

“How’d want to go about that? The trees are wet. The ground is wet. The bodies are wet. None of it would catch fire.” Podrick points out and well, he’s _not wrong._ If they want to bury the thirty or so corpses lying around, they’d have to drag them all to the nearest inn or wait until everything’s dried up.

“Then we bury them.” It’s not ideal, but it’s something, at least.

“Can’t we just move them aside?” Robin groans, having already forgotten his humility from before.

“No, we can’t.” Jon orders, and really, that’s the end of that. The knights of the Vale follow him, and neither Lord Royce nor Robin dare to protest.

One by one, they put the bodies in the ground. It’s not a mass grave, Jon makes sure of that. They dig thirty-two holes. One for each corpse. With rock placed on every small mound of earth, to mark them as graves.

That’s all they can do.

Well, that, and remember the faces of the men and women they buried.

Jon tries to, at least.

And so, his thoughts on the road are no longer about Robin Arryn and his bid for the North. They aren’t even on the disturbing dreams he’s been having. Not about the giant Raven, which he hasn’t had since, and not about the House of the Stranger, which he’s been having almost every night now.

Instead, all he thinks about, all he tries to think about, are the dead priests and priestesses, as well as the thugs who picked an unfortunate and dangerous target to go after.

Their dead eyes drift through his mind when they pass over the Twins, and he only half listens to Pod’s explanation that it hasn’t been home to a Lord since all the Freys were killed. Something about a supposed curse. It’s just a trade-post nowadays.

But they only stop for one night, and Jon has no interest in talking to the merchants, so, instead, he keeps trying to figure out how the thugs were connected to the cultists. Who could’ve told them Jon and Pod were coming their way?

Ravens? Someone else riding ahead? Sheer dumb luck?

Could be any of those, really.

Or perhaps, he thinks, as they’re riding through the Neck, it wasn’t anything like that. Perhaps it was the Red God himself, whispering at them to be there. Just so Jon could come out to get them killed.

They certainly wouldn’t be the first of the cultists to go that way.

But eventually, just as Jon is trying to suss out who of them might’ve been the first to commit to the cult, three worn towers become visible in the distance. He’s seen them before, a long time ago.

_Moat Cailin._

The last stronghold before Winterfell.

And suddenly, his mind is on completely different matters.

On home. On family. On Sansa.

He doesn’t really know what he’s meant to do with it all. He’d never got around to writing the letter he’d wanted to send to her. He’s not given her any indication that he’s heading to Winterfell and he very much doubts that Tyrion or Davos have either. So, it’s clouded in uncertainty. He doesn’t know how she’ll react. If she even wants to see him.

Furthermore, he doesn’t know what the rest of the North thinks of him either.

To them, he is Jon Snow.

The man who gave up _his crown._

Who gave up _on them_.

Handed it all over to a tyrant and a brute. And for what? For love?

It’s not good enough. It’s simply not good enough. If he were braver than he is, Jon would march down the streets of Winter Town and face their justice head on. He’d give them the chance to…reckon with his deeds.

But he’s not brave enough.

Not yet, anyway.  

He doesn’t want them to know. He’ll accept whatever they want, but not before he’s seen Sansa. Before he’s come face to face with one family member whose whereabouts are actually known. The one who succeeded him in ways he can’t quite imagine yet.

Her judgement first. Then everyone else’s.

And so, he digs the cloak and scarf they gave him in King’s landing out from the bottom of his bag. Wrapping the cloak around him and putting the scarf over his mouth and nose. It’s not strictly speaking cold yet. Not in the way Jon’s gotten used to. But there are small white flocks of snow falling out here, and several of the knights have already bundled up against the cold. Which means that Jon won’t stand out, no more than the others do, even if he is more equipped to deal with the spring snowfall than everyone else in their convoy is.

In fact, he blends in so well that even Podrick seems to lose track of him for a little while.

“Jon?-” He calls out, worry laced through his voice. “- Jon?! Where are you, mate?”

“Stop. I’m here! I’m here, alright.” He pulls at Pod’s arm, trying to make him see without attracting any more attention.

“What the…? Are you cold?” He gives him a puzzled glance.

“No, I’m not. I just…the people…I know what _Jon Snow_ has done. I don’t think I’m ready for them to see…Jon Snow just yet.”

“They won’t hate you, you know. _Jon Snow_ is still the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. He stopped the White Walkers. He’s done plenty of good, especially up here in the North.” Podrick replies.

“Maybe. -” Jon breathes, but doesn’t take off the disguise. “- But maybe I’m just not ready for that either.”

It would somehow be worse, actually. To be heralded as a hero. He doesn’t want to look them in the eye and see _admiration_ of all things. Doesn’t deserve that, because doing plenty of good doesn’t make the bad somehow less bad.

Even if he isn’t exactly the person who did either of those things in the first place.

Now, if he’s truly honest with himself, Jon is exactly what he hopes to remain: A nobody. An anonymous soldier in service of…

Well, he’s not entirely sure who he is in service of. King’s Landing? Bran? The North? The Red God himself?

All of those?

He’ll figure it out at some point.

For now, though, he lets himself be guided along the final stretches of the King’s road. Past the Barrowlands and past Cerwyn. Until, finally, he sees it.

_Home._

The towers of Winterfell are exactly as he remembers them. And Jon has to swallow down the lump lodged in his throat. After all these years, it’s _still_ there. Somehow, for some reason, he didn’t really think he’d feel this way.

It’s _not_ the same as returning to Castle Black.

It’s _not_ like seeing his Brothers again after all that time beyond the Wall.

This feeling, whatever it is, is coming from deep within. A place he rarely dares to visit anymore. A childhood that he’d meant to kill. Meant to destroy.

The last time he’d been here…Gods, it’d been the last time he’d seen Robb. The last time he would _ever_ see Robb. And Rickon. He’d said his goodbye to the smallest Stark, never realizing that there would be no second chance. No more ways to say farewell to them.

He’d left them behind. Forever. Father, Robb, Rickon, even Lady Stark.

Now, Arya and Bran are still out there somewhere. They’ll…he’ll find them. Bran first, and then Arya.

But Sansa…?

She’s _right there._ In one of those towers. Living amongst the spectres of the past. A band around his heart squeezes at the very idea.

“Are you coming?” Podrick asks, probably knowing full well it’s only a half an hour’s worth of riding to get there.

“Yes. -” Jon nods. “- I will be.”

_Coming home at last._


	11. A Northern Queen

The sun is well on its way to setting by the time they ride through the gates of Winterfell, and it is only now, looking upon the walls and the battlements that Jon truly _believes_ the Night King might be gone.

Because the whole of Westeros had looked so untouched, so pristine, that he’d been unable to imagine the threat as eliminated.

But Winterfell?

Winterfell doesn’t look like that at all.

There’s a deep ditch and a rampart in front of the castle that had never been there before. The battlements are haphazardly covered with dark spikes. Dragonglass, he absentmindedly notes. And all along the walls are these markings. Long lines criss-crossed over the bricks. Claws, he thinks at first, but then realizes that these look more as though they were made by the fingers of the dead. Unable to feel, but able to try and breach into the innards all the same.

 _This is where they fought._ Jon’s mind whispers. _This is where they won._

He shivers with the weight of it.

“You’re seeing it, aren’t you?” Podrick offers, his gaze is distant, fixed upon the last rays of sunlight, as if he’s begging them to not disappear, to keep the night at bay for a little while longer. 

“Yes. Yes, I’m seeing it. -” He replies, before nodding at the men of the Vale. “- Are they?”

“Some. Perhaps. I’m not sure if they were here…that night. Those days.”

Jon doesn’t think they were, given the ease with which they’ve unmounted and are already unpacking and conversing with the Northerners. None of them seem in any way perturbed. None, except Lord Royce.

His expression is not all that different from Pod’s, but there’s something else there too. Something seems to settle in him, as if this is a homecoming of sorts. As if he’s never truly left Winterfell behind since that battle.

He hadn’t considered that. That this old knight, of all people, would’ve been there to defend the Realm. Perhaps, Jon supposes, he shouldn’t have been so harsh on him. It’s clear that the man is as much a part of the North as he is of the South. The blood he and his men have shed here made sure of that.

“Do you think we should help them unpack?” Jon asks, but never receives an answer, because another voice pierces through the chaos of the men around him.

“Ser Podrick Payne, am I dreaming or is that really you?” The voice is pitched higher than that of the others, and sure enough, there, in-between knights of the North, stands a young woman.

Podrick, for his part, immediately goes from solemn tranquility to exuberant joy. He just about jumps off his horse and pushes his way past the men until he can wrap her into a hug and lift her up off the ground.

“Meera!” He laughs, and Jon briefly wonders if he intends to spin her around too.

“Put me down, you fool! -” She tells him, but there’s a giggle trapped in her voice as well. “- Your armour is crushing me!”

“Sorry, I’m so sorry!” Pod snorts, slowly putting her down and letting her out of his embrace.

“By the Old Gods, what are you doing all the way up here? Shouldn’t you be guarding the king?” Her question is enough for Podrick to sober up completely.

He coughs once, and then looks back at Jon, motioning him to get off his horse as well.

“We’re on a mission for the King, I’m afraid. It’s…things are rather dire, and we really must speak to the Queen as soon as possible.”

“Who’s we, exactly?” Meera asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Ah, yes. Meera, this is my friend-” Pod holds out a hand at Jon, who doesn’t wait for a slip of the tongue or a moment of hesitation.

“Qhorin. I’m Qhorin Halfhand.” He finishes, because he sincerely doubts that anyone here remembers the old ranger, if they ever knew of him in the first place.

“Right. And Qhorin, allow me to introduce you to Meera Reed, the Hand of the Queen.” Podrick smiles, but his eyes are still hiding a slight panic. He must not’ve expected anyone to actually ask for Jon’s name.

“Are you cold, Qhorin?” Meera asks, eyes sharp on the scarf that’s hiding his face.

So, this is who Sansa chose to rule by her side? Not an old man of the more prominent Houses. Not someone who would seek to lord over Sansa, who would try to rule through her rather than with her. Instead, she has a smart girl of a smaller, less wealthy House. A daughter of her father’s closest friend.

Sansa picked loyalty over status, and something like pride swells in Jon’s chest.

“He’s not used to the weather, Meera. ‘Cause he’s from the South.” Podrick tries, but it is to no avail.

“He doesn’t sound like he from the South.” She replies.

“Just…please trust me on this. You really don’t need to worry about him.” There’s this thing Podrick does with his eyes, where he almost makes them larger and seemingly more sincere. He did it several times when they were travelling along the King’s road, simply to get his way. Now, it’s not to _trick_ someone per se, but Jon has yet to meet anyone who isn’t _swayed_ by this little act of innocence.

Meera, it seems, is no exception.

“You’re lucky you’re the sweetest man on the continent, Pod. -” She scoffs, but relents all the same. “- Queen’s currently speaking with the Prince of Dorne. As soon as she’s done, I’ll escort you to her.”

And with that, she quickly and quietly leads them to the Great Hall. Once there, Meera generously offers them a bowl of soup, bread and a mug of ale.

None of which Jon can eat or drink without revealing his identity, so he refrains.

This visibly frustrates the Hand of the Queen, who was no doubt still angling to find out who he really is. Thankfully, as always, there’s Podrick to guide them into an easy sort of conversation. He asks her about the preparations for Sansa’s Name Day, and seems delighted by every witty retort Meera supplies him.

Eventually, though, she has to go and check to see if the meeting with Prince Quentin has finished, leaving Jon and Podrick to themselves, even if Pod still stares after her for a good minute or so.

“So, what was that you said about not marrying or fathering children?” Jon raises an eyebrow at his friend.

“It’s not…it isn’t like that, alright? -” He starts. “- She used to be a close friend of Bran’s and they…well, things drove them apart. After a year or so, she started writing to him but he wasn’t in any shape to write back. Too far away in places that are long gone. So, I started writing her instead. Explaining things. In so much as I could. And she wrote me back. Explaining other things. Stuff she’d seen when she travelled with him beyond the Wall. It just…it helped is all.”

A part of Jon feels for Podrick. He doesn’t know much about who Bran is right now, but there’s something so ephemeral about it all, that it can’t be easy for Podrick to wade through all that, day in and day out. Having to explain it others, no less.

Of course, the vulnerable, almost fragile look on Pod’s face tells Jon that this probably isn’t something he should be prodding at too much. Not right now, anyway.

“Seven hells, you really are the sweetest man on the continent.” He guffaws instead.

“Shut it.” Podrick groans, but there’s a note of amusement in his voice all the same.

And naturally, that’s the moment Meera returns.

“The Queen is ready for you now.” She tells them, and both Jon and Podrick get up from their seats with a speed they probably should’ve reconsidered.

Two pieces of bread go rolling off the table because they’re bumping into it, and about half a bowl of soup sloshes over both the wood and their clothes.

“Are you sure you’re ready for her?” Meera snorts, while wordlessly gesturing at them to follow her.

Jon’s already decided though, that no, he’s most definitely _not_ ready for whatever will happen next. It’d been almost easy to distract himself with the familiarity and the strangeness of Winterfell. To keep himself occupied with Podrick and whatever he may be feeling for Meera. Even to focus himself on Meera and her clever tricks.

But now? In the quiet, dark corridors of Winterfell, Jon’s heart is slowly climbing up into his throat. His hands are clammy, and his breaths are coming in uneasy when he figures out where exactly Meera is leading them to.

Father’s old study.

It makes sense for the ruler of Winterfell, _the Queen in the North,_ to situate herself there. But Gods above, how often had he not been dragged to those chambers as a child? By Ser Jory, or Ser Rodrik or Maester Luwin. Whenever he’d done something he shouldn’t, made a fuss where it wasn’t welcome for a bastard to make a fuss, he’d always end up there.

Now he’s here again, feeling just as small and just as out of place.

“Are you alright?” Pod asks, and Jon can only nod, because he _has_ to be.

He promised himself that he would be.

By the time they reach the door though, Jon’s stomach has tied itself into numerous knots, and there’s cold sweat running down his back.

Not that Meera seems to notice. She makes her way into the dark study with practiced ease, like only a true confidante of the queen would. Podrick wordlessly follows her in, cautiously glancing between the two of them.

Finally, it’s Jon’s turn to step over the threshold and peek inside. His first thought is that, like the rest of Winterfell, the study is both exactly like he remembers, and not at all. Even in the dim candlelight he can spot the similarities and differences.

Father had always kept several bookcases here to file away important documents. That hasn’t changed. But there’d been a few chairs in front of the fireplace. Those seem to have been replaced by benches, covered in fur.

Most strikingly, of course, is the occupant sitting at the desk.

Her hair is as long and as red as he remembers it to be.

_Kissed by fire._

Something like elation flutters inside of him. The shape of her face. The slope of her nose. It’s all so familiar. The form of her dress is so much like what her mother might’ve worn. The crease in her brow almost identical to the one he’d seen on father whenever he sat there.

It’s as if he’s seeing pieces of them here. Of all of them. Father, Catelyn, Robb, Bran, Arya, little Rickon and Sansa herself, most of all. Memories begin to bubble up and Jon almost automatically steps forward, finds himself gravitating to her very presence.

And then? Then she looks up at them.

“Thank you, Meera. -” Her voice is deeper, more even-tempered than he remembers. “- Ser Podrick, it’s good to see you again. Although I fear you’re not here to bring me good tidings.”

It hurts, a little, for her to address Podrick first, but that’s obviously a mess of his own making. If he’d been brave enough to come here and show his face plainly, perhaps things would’ve been different.

“No, I’m afraid not. Your Grace. We’re on a mission for the king and, uh-” He doesn’t get much further than that, because Jon’s trembling hand have started moving of their own accord. His mind, wherever it may be at the moment, apparently cannot stand the thought of staying hidden much longer.

The hood of the cloak is swept off and his fingers curl around the scarf to pull it away from his face.

Sansa’s gaze immediately shifts from Podrick to Jon. To all of Jon. Wide blue eyes are carefully assessing him and if he’d had to describe it to anyone else, Jon might say that it looks as if she’s just seen a ghost.

She rises from her seat at the desk. Perhaps she does so slowly, or quickly, he isn’t sure. Time seems to have grinded to a halt altogether.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, showing up here after all this time.” Her voice is as hard as steel and her expression is as cold as ice.

And when she steps away from her seat, it looks as though the shadows begin to move with her. The darkness that was hidden behind her begins to shift, and what he had once thought to be benches covered in fur, now appear as something else altogether.

Four yellow eyes turn towards them, and a pair of _gigantic_ black direwolves rise up and slink out into the soft glow of the candlelight.

“Five _bloody_ years. -” She growls, stalking up towards them, drawing Jon’s gaze back to her and making him realize that _oh_ she’s taller than he is now.

He inadvertently takes a step backwards.

“- Even though I told you that it wasn’t necessary. That you didn’t _have_ to! Those Unsullied will never return, there was no reason to-” Her voice has turned from wrathful to desperate, and he swears it almost sounds as if she’s close to tears.

“I-It’s not him.-” Podrick stammers, stepping between Sansa and Jon, placing a hand on her shoulder. “- Your Grace. Sansa. It’s a different Jon.”

“What?” She spits at him.

“Look at him. Just. Look him in eyes. That isn’t the man who left you for the Night’s watch. Look. He’s younger. He didn’t…we found him under the Red Keep. Resurrected by a Red Priestess, just like the other one was. In his mind, he hasn’t seen you since you left for King’s Landing the first time around.” Pod rattles off, and Jon resists the urge to close his eyes. To pray that she’ll listen, that she’s able to even understand _half_ of what his friend is trying to explain to her.

There’s no answer, though.

She doesn’t refute his words. Doesn’t ask for clarification or accuses him of lying.

Instead, she merely stares.

The wolves, likewise, have paused in their step.

A bubble of air gets caught in Jon’s throat, he doesn’t dare to breathe in or out, for fear that it might change what she sees in him. That it might cloud up the unlikely truth he frantically wishes her to believe.

But then, without warning or preparation, she surges towards him.

Her arms wrap around him as she buries her face against his neck. Jon has to briefly concentrate on _not tumbling_ over altogether, before he’s well and truly enveloped by the hug, by her welcoming scent, her soft body against his and _Gods_ this is all he’s ever wanted.

It’s possible he may whimper, actually, at some point, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he’s here. That she _wants_ him to be here. Everything, _everything,_ that has been weighing down on his shoulders suddenly disappears.

Jon closes his eyes and rests his forehead on her shoulder. It’s alright. Everything will be alright and he can surely convince himself of that so long has he can stay here and keep her against him. So long as he can keep her.

The moment both lasts forever and is over within the blink of an eye.

Suddenly, she’s withdrawing from him, the warmth is slipping from his grasp and he’s _this_ close to begging her to come back when she raises her gaze up at him again. Two slim hands come up to cup his face and he can’t help himself from mirroring the gesture. To use his thumbs in order to wipe away the tears rolling down her cheeks.

_Why are you crying?_

_Don’t cry._

_Please._

“You’re home. -” She sniffles. “It’s alright. You’re home.”

 And for the first time since arriving in Winterfell, Jon believes that he just might be.


	12. A Dark Wolf

“So, can either of you explain to me what exactly has happened to Bran?” Sansa takes a deep breath, even as her hands are gliding from Jon’s cheeks to his shoulders.

And Jon, meanwhile, tries to do the same. Tries to force his mind back to the real world out there, and everything he set out to accomplish.

 It doesn’t quite work yet.

“Uh.-” Podrick replies. Because he still exists too, and he’s still right next to the two of them. “- You know? About Bran?”

“I know you’re here. And I know you would never leave my brother’s side willingly. That alone tells me plenty. Never mind the fact that the ravens have been an absolute nightmare as of late.” She gently moves out of Jon’s arms and guides him to her desk. The two direwolves, likewise, pad alongside her.

Podrick, though, drags a chair from one end of the study until it’s standing in front of the desk. And Jon, once he’s shaken off the clouds in his mind, finds himself a chair of his own. Putting it next to Pod’s.

Meera stays standing in the back, looking rather fascinated by this turn of events.

_I bet you never thought it was me hiding underneath that scarf._

“Right, so. The last letter I received from Bran arrived three moons ago, and in it, he spoke of an uproar in the city. Religious zealots, I believe? He mentioned a murder concerning your Master of Law.” Sansa looks between the two of them.

“Uh, yes. I suppose I should start there. -” Pod scratches his head and the tension in his shoulders seems to rise. “- They seemed to be targeting the members of the Small Council specifically.”

“Hence your decision to send Sam and his family to us.” She says, and oh, yeah, Jon had…well, not _forgotten_ about that, but the notion of seeing his old friend again had been buried under everything else.

“Yeah. Although he requested that. But, anyway, it wasn’t until later on that we figured it was just a distraction. A diversion of sorts. Trying to sow discord and panic in the highest legislative body of the Six Kingdoms so that their actual target was less guarded.” Podrick sniffs.

“My brother.” Sansa concludes.

“Yes. We’d redirected most of our efforts in guarding the remaining members of the council. And when the next attack came, sometime after midnight. W-when they managed to slip into the Keep…-” It’s odd now, to hear the story again. To listen to Podrick tell it and know _him,_ as a person. The way his voice becomes something different from the cheerful and easy-going timbre he usually carries.

He clamps up. He stutters. Doesn’t seem to know how to pick the words, and Jon realises that this event is something that clearly haunts Podrick more than facing down an army of wights.

“- I should have been _there._ Stayed with _him_ instead of trying to keep his solar secure.” He rubs a hand over his face, and even as he does it, one of Sansa’s black beasts comes up to lay its enormous head on Pod’s lap, coaxing a watery smile from him.

“What happened next?” Meera’s still in the back of the room, but she doesn’t sound wholly even-keeled anymore.

“He was just…gone. They didn’t kill him. The cultists didn’t even know what was happening.” He sighs, hands now playing with one of the direwolf’s ears.

“W-was it…Where are his chambers located?” She asks, eyes seeking for a specific answer. Even if Jon cannot quite phantom _what_ that answer might be.

“At the Western wing of the Keep. Why?” Podrick blinks, clearly as confused as Jon is.

“That’s near the Godswood, isn’t it?” Sansa pipes up.

“I…yes, you can look out on it from his balcony.” Jon can almost see the gears in Pod’s head start to turn.

“So, what? You think Bran somehow climbed all the way down into the Godswood?” he snorts, because that is downright preposterous. Even if Bran did have working legs. It would be nigh impossible.

“I don’t think he climbed. I think he flew.-” Meera snaps back at Jon. “- I’ve spent time with the previous Three-eyed Raven, however brief, and the weirwood trees are…well, the man must’ve been hundreds of years old, but he was still alive, completely entwined in one of those trees. If Bran has spent the last five years living next to the Godswood in King’s Landing, then who knows how much of _him_ is in there already.”

“Fine. Maybe some piece of Bran was in the tree. I don’t know. But that still doesn’t explain how he got _all the way down there._ ” Jon presses the palms of his hands against his eyes, trying to will away his oncoming headache.

“Doesn’t it?” Sansa asks the room at large, but doesn’t seem to expect an answer, because when Jon looks up again, she’s moved from the desk towards the mantel of the fireplace. Her slender fingers are rooting around in a small box, but Jon can’t really tell what she gets out from it. The light’s too dim.

He can see her moving towards the window, though. Can see her open it and can clearly see her put whatever she took out of the box onto the sill.

There’s a rustle coming from out of the dark sky. A flapping of wings, and then, one by one, several ravens land there. Each contentedly picking at…what is _that?_ Dried apple, maybe?

“Bran.” Sansa merely gestures at the ravens.

“Alright, _perhaps, a_ nd that’s a rather generous _perhaps,_ Bran went into the mind of a raven…or maybe he just became a _bloody raven_ himself and flew into the tree-” It sounds ridiculous. It sounds _so, so_ ridiculous, but hey, Jon came back from the dead _twice_ now, so who is he to judge? “- Then what do we do? Go all the way back to the Red Keep and search for him in the Godswood there?”

“You think we haven’t already? We’ve scoured the entire city in the aftermath of his disappearance.” Podrick sighs.

“And it wouldn’t make much sense with the dreams either.” Jon adds.

“What dreams?” Sansa is back to sitting behind the desk, hands neatly folded over one another. There’s tension there, though. Jon can see it in the clench of her muscles. The white spots on her fingertips as she presses them down.

“Yes, and while you’re at it, you might want to consider explaining _why_ you even got resurrected in the first place?” Meera snorts, but the more they seem to argue with her, the less irritated she seems to become.

Perhaps, Jon wonders, arguing is simply a way for her to reckon with the changes. With the unknown.

“If you’re here, if you were brought back to life, does that mean that the other Jon is dead?” Something in Sansa’s voice seems to waver, and there’s a quiet, desperate sort of dread in her eyes as she looks from Pod to Jon and then back to Pod.

Not that either of them can give her the answer she’s looking for.

“We…were actually rather hoping you’d be able to tell us that?” Jon blurts out, a wry smile quirking at his lips.

They came all the way to Winterfell to find out what happened to his other self and to Bran, but so far, it seems that the people in the south know more about the two Northern kings than the North itself does.

“Well, I can’t. -” Sansa huffs, twisting and twining her fingers together. “- Jon left his post at Castle Black five years ago and went beyond the Wall. We’ve heard _nothing_ from him since then. He’s sent no word, no letters and no news. In fact, there’s only one thing he’s sent me since disappearing into the unknown…”

“Direwolves.” Meera mutters.

“Direwolves. -” Sansa wearily confirms. “- Every other year, a man or a woman of the Free Folk will show up at the gates of Winterfell. ‘A gift for the Queen in the South from the Lord Commander’, they’ll say, and then they’ll hand me another Direwolf pup. If I try asking them where he is or how he’s been, they’ll always tell me that they didn’t see him themselves. Just got the pup handed to them too.”

“So, these two…?” Jon points at the black beasts that have made themselves comfortable at odd corners of the room. One still with Podrick, the other sitting at the fireplace.

“Gifts. Yes. He doesn’t seem to understand, or doesn’t seem to _want_ to understand that I would rather give up all the direwolves in the world than miss him for yet another year.” There’s grief there. A lot of it. And Jon cannot blame her for that in the least.

Because if nothing else, he’s just gotten another helping of shame and anger to add to the already growing pile of resentment towards his other self.

Why, in the name of the Old Gods and the New would he cower away beyond the Wall when he has a home here? People who actually _want_ him here. Is it some form of self-flagellation, perhaps?  A penance for giving up his crown and swearing fealty to a tyrant?

But even if it is, why _not_ send letters to Sansa? He’s clearly got no problem sending her wolves, why would a written note be any different?

_Who is that man? Because I surely don’t recognize him._

Jon cannot help but wonder that, even as he reaches for Sansa’s hand. He gently tries to loosen the grip she has on her own fingers and then places the freed hand in-between the palms of his own.

“I’m sorry.” Is all he can say, because if nothing else, Sansa deserves that much. His other self has abandoned her, at a time where she truly needs him. Whatever bond they may or may not have had in the past, this is simply downright cruel. And perhaps he cannot undo all that this Lord Commander has done but he can damn well try to make some amends for it, at least.

“Thank you. That means…you don’t know how much that means to me.” Sansa lets out a deep breath, and places her free hand on top of their joined ones.

Her eyes are bright and warm and it’s very easy to become a little lost in them. After all, no-one really looks at Jon like that. There’s a sense of belonging here. Something that he had not felt amongst the brothers of the Night’s Watch, or the Free Folk for that matter.

It becomes even more inexplicable then, that the other Jon had walked away.

“You were saying something about dreams?” Meera raises an eyebrow, not nearly as impressed with his apology as Sansa is.

“Yes. Sorry. It’s been…ever since I’ve…returned, I’ve been having these incredibly vivid dreams, that are almost…Well, they don’t feel much like dreams at all.” He stammers, because it sounds a little odd when you say it out loud.

“Wolf dreams?” Sansa asks. fingers still warm and soft against Jon’s.

“Not quite. I don’t think. There’s a little bit of it in there. But there are other pieces. Bran was there, once. I saw him, in the snow. That’s why I decided, why _we_ decided, to come North.” He doesn’t want to tell her about the Raven dreams just yet. Mostly because he doesn’t really know what to do with those.

They’re too different, too abstract to make it into something real. Something that can be spoken about in a room at large.

“What else did you see, when you saw Bran. Where was he? Was there any sort of geographic markers that might tell us more?” Whatever else can be said about Meera, she’s certainly practical.

“There’s usually a sparse forest, a small lake. A mountain. Lots of snow and ice.” Jon mumbles, well aware that it’s not much to go on.

“Mountains? Or _a mountain,_ singular?” She asks him, narrowing her eyes.

“Mountain. Singular. There’s only ever one, and it’s always there.” He replies.

There’s a low whistle then, coming from Meera, right before she steps away and stares out of the window, into the darkness beyond.

“You know of it.” Podrick concludes.

“I do.” Her voice is little more than a whisper now.

“Is it the Frostfangs?” Sansa says, trying to pin her friend down with an odd sort of look.

“Frostfangs’s a mountain range. That’s why I asked. Every mountain is connected to another. There’s not one that stands even remotely alone.” Meera has yet to turn back to them.

“Then where is the one that stands alone?” Jon finds himself saying.

“I’ve not been there myself. Only glimpsed at it once, while on the run. It’s further north than I’ve ever gone.” She sighs.

“Further north than _you’ve_ ever gone?-” Pod splutters. “- But that would put it…”

“That would put it beyond Thenn. In the Land of Always Winter.” Sansa’s hand clutches at Jon’s.

“Yes. Yes, it would. -” Meera finally turns back towards them, a grave expression painted across her face. “- It’s a perilous place, and I don’t know that anyone’s ever gone there and came back to tell the tale exactly. But, there are rumours. Free Folk myths. They say that the mountain isn’t where Night King was born, but that it is where he made his home ever since the first Long Night.”

Something in Jon’s chest, something that had only just started waking up and warming itself, turns back to ice. Hardhome is there again, in his mind’s eye, cold blue eyes staring at him. Penetrating his very soul and trying to grasp at it. Claw at it and wound it so that Jon may never dare to fight back again.

“But the Night King is dead. We know that for sure.” Podrick sounds so much braver than Jon thinks he’ll ever be. Perhaps, though, he can be bolstered by his friend. Can make the leap so long as he’s not just by himself in doing it. So long as Pod is with him.

“You’re right. He’s gone. And if my dreams are leading me north. Then it’s north I’ll go.” He nods, trying not stumble on the words.

He has to do this.

This is his _third chance_ to get things right. He’d wasted his first and had downright shamed himself in his second.

But then. A grip on his hands. Sansa looking at him. Pale like he’s never seen her before. What was a larger than life queen minutes ago has now returned to the young girl he once knew. 

“We’ll need supplies for the journey, and horses.” Podrick’s voice sounds far away now. Like they aren’t even in the same chambers anymore.

“Horses?” Meera, equally distant, replies, but Jon cannot focus on any of that. All he sees is Sansa.

She has blue eyes too, but of a wholly different kind.

“Don’t go.” Her voice is almost too loud. Echoing through the room. Drawing the attention of the direwolves upon herself.

“Apologies, your Grace, but I don’t quite understand?” Jon can’t see Podrick right now, but he can easily imagine the stilted look on his face, brimming with confusion.

“Don’t go. Not yet. We may be well into spring, but venturing that far into a no man’s land by yourself is still a death sentence.” There’s a panic in her voice that stings at his chest.

And in his mind, Jon has already said yes. Has already agreed to stay. Because in truth, he would like nothing more than to familiarize himself with his _home_ again. With the only family left to him.

But then he looks at Pod.

Sees the determination on his friend’s face.

They came here with a mission. They came here to do _good_ for a change. And so, it’s with pain in his heart that he has to announce what comes next.

“I’m sorry, but we have to go. For Bran’s sake. For the sake of the Kingdoms.” Six or seven of them. He’ll let everyone else decide on that.

“I know. -” she sighs. “- Of course I know that, I’m merely asking you to _wait._ Wherever Bran is, he’s been there for quite some time now. I doubt he’ll be in much more danger then he already was.”

“The Small Council is still at risk. There are still cultists swarming King’s Landing.” Podrick argues.

“And Bran’s presence is not going to change that. I know you think the world of him, Ser Podrick, but if he couldn’t stop them the first time around, how will be able to do so a second time?” Sansa’s voice is soft, but her words wound him, Jon can tell.

“There’s a reason why he sent us to find him!” Pod screws his eyes shut, hands roughly holding on to the black wolf’s fur.

“And there’s a reason why he disappeared in the first place. -” Sansa retaliates, unashamed and unyielding. “- Listen. A few weeks from now, we’re sending a convoy beyond the Wall. You’ll be able to travel with them for a part of your journey, and you can meet more experienced Free Folk men and women who can guide you to Thenn and beyond.”

And that?

Well, that actually sounds fairly promising. More so than going about this sort of thing by themselves. Jon has travelled beyond the Wall, and rarely ever did so alone. There is strength in numbers, he knows that. The brothers of the Night’s Watch knew that, and so did the Free Folk.

He wants to stay with Sansa on an instinctive level, and it seems she’s feeling the same way about it, but her arguments are more than just an emotional response.

She’s not wrong when she says it’s dangerous out there. Even _if_ the Others are gone. And if there’s one thing he’s learned from travelling with Podrick, it’s that sometimes going slower means going faster in the long run.

“It would be beneficial for us to be a part of a convoy. -” Jon carefully tries out the words on his tongue. “- to gather our bearings instead of blindly running into a blizzard.”

“Jon, we can’t just sit around and…” Podrick starts, but peters off rather quickly.  

“We wouldn’t just be sitting around, Pod. There’s plenty to do here too. Remember the barricade? Remember that little shit of a-” He glances at Sansa, doesn’t dare finish his sentence, but surely, it’s clear that he’s talking about Robin Arryn and his plans of usurping the throne.

“Still, it’s a distraction.” He sighs, leaning back in the chair.

“Come now, it’s preparation. You know we need that.”

“I…I…I suppose I haven’t got much choice, now do I? You’re the only clue we have as to where Bran is. I wouldn’t know where to go otherwise. -” Pod splutters. Then, he takes a deep breath and abruptly turns to Sansa. “- Will you please excuse me, your Grace? It’s been a trying day and I should probably get some rest.”

“By all means, Ser. One of our stewards can escort you to the chambers we’ve prepared for you.” She lets him go with a calm smile and a mere nod.

Podrick accepts that gesture without much grace or finesse. He’s up and out of his chair within seconds, letting it scrape over the heavy wooden floor of the study before all but stomping away.

“Pod…Podrick!-” Jon grouses, because this is childish, and they weren’t done talking yet. “- Come back, Pod!”

Without asking Sansa for permission, or looking to her for support, Jon sidles out of his own chair and follows his friend towards the corridor beyond.

It doesn’t take much to catch up him. Jon’s armour is lighter, and he’s actually making an effort to jog  to him, rather than copying the trudging steps of the knight in question.

“Don’t walk away, please.” He tries to gently lay a hand on Pod’s shoulder, only to have it shrugged off instead.

“Jon, I am tired. Exhausted. We’ve travelled a long way and this place is…there are memories here. Ones I’m not entirely keen on revisiting right now.” He rubs a hand over his eyes.

“That’s not why you left though, is it?”

“We can talk about that tomorrow. Or the day after. You’ve just made sure that we’ll have plenty of time for it either way.” There’s a biting remark in there, but almost all of the acidity in it is belied by the fact that Podrick genuinely sounds like he’s at the end of his wits.

“I just…I don’t want to wake up in the morning and find you gone. Be that because you’re travelling further to the North or back towards the south.” Jon lets his arms hang limply by his side, unsure what to do with them otherwise.

“You won’t. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that I’ll sleep ‘till noon once my head hits the pillow.”

But that’s not a promise that he’ll _stay._ That’s not him saying that he won’t be going anywhere without Jon. That’s just him saying that he’s too tired to go anywhere at the crack of dawn.

Still, that’s all Jon is going to get tonight, because Pod’s turned away again. Has resumed his stiff and taxing walk to the innards of the castle. And before he can even think of following him down the hallway, his left flank is bumped by a large, warm creature slipping past.

Immediately after, there’s another shove on his right flank. The second direwolf, coming through as well. He’s bigger than the first, and going at a quicker pace, catching up to the other one easily, before softly growling and snapping at him.

“Let him go, Torrhen.” It’s Sansa, appearing right next to Jon.

The bigger wolf turns to face her, gives her an expression that Jon only knows because he’s had years of practice with Ghost. It’s indignant in a way, like the beast doesn’t _want_ to necessarily follow her command, but will, because _she’s_ the one who’s asking.

Sure enough, the first of the direwolves is free to quietly pad off after Podrick, tongue lolling out of its mouth as it goes.

“I’m sure Ser Podrick could use some company tonight. Especially the kind that doesn’t talk back at him.” She raises an eyebrow, and Jon is quite sure that Sansa just gave him the same command as she gave her direwolf, but with more words.

“I didn’t think he’d take it this badly.” He mutters, staring at the ground. Feels the other direwolf move past him again, black fur barely grazing his arm.

“The road to knighthood was a long and arduous for him. So, it’s more than an occupation. It’s a calling. And once he found his place at Bran’s side…Well, I’m not quite sure Podrick knows who he is if he isn’t a knight of the Kingsguard.” Sansa explains, wrapping her arm around his.     

“Still, I would’ve liked to finish our discussion.” Jon hums as he glances at her face, the way it’s now so close to his.

“I’ll ask Meera to talk to him in the morning.” She concedes, scrunching up her nose just a little bit.

“The afternoon would be better. He just told me he has plans to sleep in.” He gives her a small smile.

“The afternoon, then. -” Sansa lets out a quiet huff of laughter. “- As for you, have you eaten yet, or have you just been spilling the soup instead?”

Which, yes, in his haste to talk to Sansa, to see her again, he’d maybe sort of forgotten about the soup.

“I suppose I could eat. -” He shrugs nonchalantly, before quickly moving on. “- So, Torrhen, huh?”

He’s not sure if the wolf has returned to the study, or if it’s coming with them as they walk towards the kitchen.

“Yes, that’s his name.” The reply is coy, as if she’s not willing to give him more than that just _yet._

“The Last King in the North for the first Queen in the North. It’s fitting, I should think, but it does beg the question, what did you name the other one?” It’s easy to fall into this. Somehow. This kind and gentle banter that they’ve never shared before but that feels familiar anyway.

“Harlon. That one is called Harlon.” She tells him, and he _remembers_ that name, even if it takes him a while to understand where from.

“Harlon Stark. The King in the North who defeated the Boltons. -” He’d heard snippets of what that family had done to Sansa. What Sansa had done to that family in return. “- Another well-chosen name.”

“Thank you, I’m glad you like them. Not many of the Lords did, at first.” There’s another quirk of her lips, a secret sort of indulgence that Jon is not privy to.

“Why not?”

“Well, you see, about a year or so after I’d ascended to the throne, people started asking _questions._ Started wondering when I would choose a husband. Find myself a king.”

Jon feels his spine straightening at the mention of it. Tries not to think about that little Arryn twat.

“But you didn’t.” After all, she’s not wed to anyone.

“No, but the remarks kept coming. The lords were getting impatient. And…well, for a while there I didn’t feel like speaking about it. Speaking to anyone, really. I’d only just received Torrhen, and couldn’t understand _why_ you…why he wasn’t here instead. -” She swallows before continuing her story.“- So, I hid away like a coward, for quite a few months. By the time I emerged, Torrhen had grown rather significantly in size, as direwolf pups tend to do.”

“Aye, they sure do.” Jon agrees, thinking back on his early days with Ghost.

“No-one at court had so much as laid eyes on Torrhen. They weren’t even aware of his existence, for the most part. Which meant that the Lords were unaccustomed to him and he was unaccustomed to the Lords. You could say that my first public meeting with them was therefore…quite a shock.”  She seems to draw a sort of glee from the memory.

“A shock? In that you showed up to greet them with a half-trained bear of a beast? Yeah, can’t imagine why.” He’s not sure whether to praise her or admonish her.

“Hm. Well, in any case, whenever they asked me about finding myself a king, I merely told them the truth; that I had already found one. And then they’d generally look and point at Torrhen. Of course, Torrhen, at the time, did not like that very much.” Sansa shrugs, but Jon knows what ‘ _did not like that very much’_ means when it comes to a growing direwolf.

It means growling. It means ears flat at the neck. It means snapping teeth at others.

It means looking dangerous, even unintentionally.  

“Seven hells, Sansa, you must’ve scared them shitless.” No wonder Lord Royce has been tiptoeing around the issue of her marriage so much.

“Possibly. Yes. -” She’s outright smirking now. “- But there’s something to be said for effective measures. After all, by the time Harlon came along and started growing into his own, the questions had ceased completely.”

“I wonder why?!” Jon replies flatly.

“Don’t worry. They’re perfectly sociable now, and they never would’ve hurt a lord. I wouldn’t have let them.”

He doesn’t doubt that for a second, given the way she’d trained Lady to perfection.   

“But did _they_ know that?” He grins a little.

“Of course they did! I told them. Several times. Loudly. It’s just…well, it’s hardly my fault men’s brain tend to shut down when there are teeth bared at the same height as their crotches.” There’s a coquettish glint in her eyes that has Jon’s heart up in his throat, and laughter bubbling out from his chest.

By the old Gods and the new, he’s not even angry at the Arryn boy anymore.

How could he be, when that tiny, snivelling little falcon has positioned himself right at the jaws of the wolf queen herself?

This should be an interesting affair to say the least.


End file.
